I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 

4 * # 

# $\ 

| UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, t 



THE 



SAFEST CREED 



AND 



TWELVE OTHER RECENT 



DISCOURSES OF REASON. 



OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM. 




NEW YORK: 

ASA K. BUTTS & CO., PUBLISHERS,, 

36 Dey Street. 
1874. 



// 




Lange, Little & Co., 

PBINTERS, ELECTEOTYPERS AND STEREOTYPER8, 

108 to 114 Wooster Street, N. Y. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I. — The Safest Creed 5 

II. — The Radical Belief 22 

III. — The Radical's Root 44 

IV. — The Joy of a Free Faith 61 

V. — Living Faith 77 

VI. — The Gospel of To-day 93 

VII. — The Gospel of Character 110 

VIII. — The Scientific Aspect of Prayer 131 

IX.— The Naked Truth 149 

X. — The Dying and the Living God 166 

XI. — The Infernal and the Celestial Love 182 

XII. — The Immortalities of Man 200 

XIII. — The Victory over Death „. 220 



I. 

THE SAFEST CREED. 

nn HE great word in the doctrinal part of the New Test- 
-*- anient is Salvation. The great word of the Protest- 
ant theology is Salvation. Salvation is Safety. Safety is 
health. " Safe and sound," we say ; that is sound winch 
is safe; that is safe which is sound. Health consists in 
the proper adjustment of the creature to his conditions. 
Health of body consists in this ; it is a perfect under- 
standing between the body and its material surroundings, 
climate, temperature, food, occupations. The physical 
constitution is safe when no inherited disease undermines 
its vitality and exposes it to hidden assault from within 
the citadel, and when no ill-adjustment of circumstances 
threatens it with malady. 

The safety of the mind consists in a harmonious rela- 
tion with the intellectual world, which assures to it a 
healthful, happy activity, undisturbed by tormenting 
doubt or disabling fear, uncramped by prejudices that 
limit inquiry, or bigotries that prevent culture. The 
safety of the heart consists in the fortunate direction and 
felicitous play of its natural affections. In what does 
the safety of the soul consist, if not in its sense of secu- 
rity in the world of Providence, its trust in the Eternal ? 

The safe creed is the desirable one, as all will acknowl- 
edge. Salvation under some form is what all demand of 
their faith. Smile as we will at the absurdity of the 
statement, to the multitude there is great force in the ar- 
gument as put by the " evangelical " to the rationalist, 



6 THE SAFEST GREED. 

thus : " Whether you be right or not, I, at all events, am 
on the safe side. If I am wrong in my belief, no harm 
can befall me in consequence ; all that the unbeliever has 
is mine. But if you are wrong, your soul is in peril. 
No penalty is attached to the rejection of your creed; 
the rejection of mine brings the penalty of everlasting 
damnation." 

Salvation is commonly associated with a future state ; 
if it were not, it would possess no religious significance. 
The safety sought is safety after death, not before. The 
creed is a policy of insurance against fire hereafter, the 
fire being certain, and the validity of the policy being 
guaranteed by the Lord of the Universe himself. If this 
were so, if these two grand assumptions could be main- 
tained, all debate would be at an end. But this is the 
very matter in controversy. If we knew anything about 
this hell, its reality, its place, its nature ; if we had reason 
to believe that it was a strange, unprecedented, uncon- 
jecturable condition, the laws whereof had no relation to 
the laws of our terrestrial sphere — a condition in which, 
for example, people walked on their heads, ate with their 
ears, thought with their stomachs, worshiped with their 
collar bones, or by any other arrangement reversed the 
rules we are guided by in our present life ; if, in a word, 
salvation, safety, or health, there, meant something very 
different from what we have in mind when we speak of 
safety or health — we might listen to the theologian, and 
take his prescription. But seeing that nobody knows 
anything about hell, not even whether there be such a 
place ; seeing that the future after death is all an uncer- 
tainty, whereof we have no definite account ; seeing that, 
in all our experience, to-day is the child of yesterday and 
the parent of to-morrow, and therefore the future, how- 



THE SAFEST GREED. 7 

ever long, must be the result of the present, the next life 
of this life, and the hereafter of the here — it may fairly 
be assumed that salvation must be the same thing in 
either state ; what is safety in the one will be safety in the 
other; sanity will everywhere be sanity, and health will 
everywhere be health. No person can be lost hereafter 
who is saved now. The healthy soul can have no fear of 
perdition. This is what Father Taylor had in mind 
when he made the oft-quoted remark touching Mr. Em- 
erson, " He cannot go to heaven, for he is no Christian ; 
but what would they do with him in hell ? He would 
change the climate ; he would turn the tide of emigration 
that way." 

It follows, then, that the present is our only concern. 
The safest creed is that which gives the best guarantee 
of mental security under actual circumstances. What 
this is it may be difficult in detail to say ; it would be 
rash to undertake even in general terms to describe it ; for 
the laws of health are not laid down finally in regard to 
the body ; much less can they be laid down for the mind. 
We are in the stage of experiment here ; all is crude, 
almost chaotic. The rational method has not, as yet, 
been applied to the problem ; the wisest men are students ; 
the most experienced are seekers. I have no mind to be 
dogmatic, and am more disposed to consider the gen- 
eral elements of safety and of peril than to declare the 
rules for entering the one, or avoiding the other. But if 
safety consists in the natural and harmonious adjust- 
ment of the mind to its surroundings, certain positions 
may be taken with a good deal of confidence. 

There is small risk in declaring, for instance, that no 
creed is safe that has insecure foundations; for the re- 
moval of the foundations will endanger the creed, though 



8 THE SAFEST CREED. 

it be of the noblest and most beautiful. St. Peter's it- 
self would fall were its supports to give way ;. neither the 
grandeur of its dome, nor the loveliness of its decorations, 
nor the richness of its shrines, would save it. The might- 
iest mind crumbles under the influence of inherited dis- 
ease. 

Now the creed of Christendom does rest on insecure 
foundations. 

One of these is Prophecy. Prom first to last, believers 
have been disposed to rest their faith on this argument, 
that the Old Testament prefigures the New, that the 
prophets foretold the Christ. Instances are brought to 
prove that ages before Jesus appeared, his coming, his 
character, even the main incidents of his career, particu- 
larly his miraculous birth -and his tragic death, were pre- 
dicted ; it is asserted that no effort of human reason would 
have availed to lift this heavy curtain of the future, that 
it must have been miraculously withdrawn ; and it is 
claimed that the correspondence between the prophecy 
and the result is perfect, and, this being the case, nothing 
remains but to accept the system thus authenticated. 

But nothing is more certain than that this proof of 
prophecy has given way, utterly. Scholarship has under- 
mined it ; criticism has thrown it down. Discreoit has 
been brought upon every process of the argument. The 
correspondence between the event and the prediction is 
denied ; the very fact of the prediction is called in ques- 
tion. When tried by historical and literary tests, the 
whole claim fails to justify itself. This fact has not been 
extensively divulged as yet ; the news has not been widely 
spread; the intelligence is confined to the comparatively 
small company of the investigators, and those interested 
in the investigation. But to these it is familiar knowl- 



THE SAFEST CREED. 9 

edge ; and they are beginning to communicate it by con- 
versation and writing. Before very long the tidings will 
be generally made known ; and then what is likely to 
happen ? The faith of many will be shaken. Belief will 
be succeeded by unbelief, confidence by suspicion, trust" 
by despair. The disease of suspicion will seize on the 
common mind ; reason will not be listened to ; the heart 
will refuse to be comforted; souls will feel that they 
have lost their hold on the eternal wisdom. Such has 
been the history of multitudes already, and such is des- 
tined to be the history of multitudes more. 

Another proof is Miracle; and this is one of the 
strongest. But this, like the other, has fallen, though the 
noise of the ruin has not yet startled the inattentive ear. 
Not only has each separate miracle been analyzed and re- 
solved into natural elements, the principle that lies at the 
ground of all miraculous belief, the principle of suspend- 
ed law, is, by the foremost thinkers and writers of the 
age, repudiated. The distinction between the Bible mir- 
acles and other legends has been obliterated ; all stories 
of miracle have been brought under one general classifi- 
cation; the causes of the growth of legends have been 
investigated ; the conditions of belief in prodigies have 1 
been examined ; the natural history, so to speak, of mar- 
vel has been studied so carefully that for every specimen 
a place has been found, and a name invented. And the 
result of it all is that the argument from miracle is pro- 
nounced worthless. 

The discovery has proved most disastrous to those 
who made miracle — miracles in general, or special mir- 
acles in particular — the corner-stone of their belief. 
Some have dropped into atheism and materialism. Con- 
sider, for example, the melancholy case of those who 

1* 



10 THE SAFEST CREED. 

build their belief in an infinite mind on the fact of mir- 
acle. There are some who do this. There arc some 
who declare that their only escape from the creed of 
Fatalism is through the persuasion that Elijah called 
down fire from heaven, or that Jesus came into the world 
differently from other mortals, or that at his command 
Lazarus came forth alive from the grave in which he had 
lain four days, or that he himself on the third day from 
his crucifixion rose from the dead and appeared visibly 
and palpably to his friends. Facts like these, they say, 
testify to the existence of a God superior to Nature ; and 
if such facts are denied, the existence of a God superior 
to Nature falls into disrepute ; so vanish all the hopes 
and faiths, the aspirations and the consolations, that ac- 
company the sublime creed of the Theist. 

But these facts are denied, and are likely to be called 
in question more and more widely, and more and more 
roughly. The set of the human intellect is against them, 
and will be more and more against them. The thinking 
people are incredulous, and the thinking people are in- 
creasing in numbers daily. Men are feeling, and are 
living as though they felt, that the world they live in is 
a world of law. The material universe proclaims law in 
every part of its domain : the stars in their faithful 
courses, the sun in its rising and going down, the seasons 
in their beauteous alternation, the plants in their growth, 
animals in their development — all attest the rule of law. 
In their practical existence men assume law ; the con- 
duct of life presupposes it ; business is grounded on it ; 
enterprise rests on it ; all social arrangements take it for 
granted; calculations, statistics, combinations of all 
kinds, demand it. The numberless insurance offices rest 
on law. This practical assumption, which is fixed and 



THE SAFEST GREED. 11 

unlimited in secular affairs, lias not yet, to any very mani- 
fest extent, touched the domain of religious credence ; 
but it will reach it soon ; it is hastening that way, and 
when it sweeps over this field as it already sweeps over 
the field of practical existence, they who trusted in mir- 
acle will be made desolate. Safety demands the instant 
removal of all spiritual treasures from such exposed pre- 
cincts. The building totters. Happy they who have 
nothing they prize there ! 

The case is still sadder when the heart is touched. 
How shall we describe the rashness of people who build 
their faith in immortality on the resurrection of Jesus, 
hanging all their hopes of a hereafter on a cord of tradi- 
tion two thousand years long, attached at one end to a 
fragment of literature at which a hundred sharp-toothed 
critics are nibbling ; snapping all tethers beside, casting 
off as useless the stays which the soul offers, rejecting 
with scorn the helps which the heart throws out, disdain- 
ing to touch the lines stretched by history and philoso- 
phy, and suspending the full weight of the future world 
on a thread which runs across deserts and beneath oceans, 
and is exposed to the incessant friction of mind all along 
its course ! Can any but madmen take such risk ? The 
cord snaps, and the faith is gone ; the ship of the soul 
drifts away into the inane ; darkness gathers about the 
drifting spirits ; the vessel, freighted with the heart's 
most precious treasures of hope, drives away into the 
darkness and never is seen more; To confound the sup- 
ports of a faith with the faith itself, to make the founda- 
tions part of the faith, is the height of unwisdom. The 
early Christians accounted for the fact that there were 
four gospels, and no more, by analogy with two other 
facts : one that there were four main divisions of the 



12 " THE SAFEST CBEED. 

earth, the other that the four winds blew from four points 
of the compass. The argument was satisfactory to them 
in the condition of their knowledge of geography ; but 
if they had made their geography a constituent part of 
their faith, what would have become of the gospel records 
by this time ? A Greek proverb says that God hangs 
the heaviest weights on the smallest wires. But he al- 
ways makes sure that the wires are strong enough to sus- 
tain the weights. It is not quite safe for men to try the 
experiment. Their wisdom rather consists in a very ex- 
act adjustment of wires to weights. A wise saying warns 
people against trusting all their eggs to one basket. 
When our ships put to sea, they provide boats in case of 
shipwreck; they take extra bolts, chains and tackle, 
against the exigency of disaster to the machinery. If 
one anchor or cable gives way, the ship need not be lost. 
Would we expose the mind to risks we carefully guard 
the person from ? 

Protestanism grounds its faith on the Scriptures. 
" The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Prot- 
estants." If the Bible were another name for the Bock 
of Ages, no piece of literature subject to literary laws 
and literary criticism, but a monument of the divine in- 
telligence, a fragment of intellectual adamant, on which 
Time can only break his teeth, and the storms of a thou- 
sand centuries make no impression, this foundation would 
be safe, and to build on it would be wise. But we all 
know that the Bible is nothing of this kind ; that it is a 
book, the product of human intelligence, written in 
human speech, marked all over with traces of human 
speculation. We all know that it holds its place in the 
line of mental development ; that it belongs to the litera- 
ture of a race, to the literature of a single race. We 



THE SAFEST GREED. 13 

know that the scholarship of the last two hundred years 
has made havoc with the doctrine of its infallible inspira- 
tion, and effectually destroyed its claim to be considered 
a miraculous volume. 

Is it safe, then, to stake the highest moral and spiritual 
interests of man, the faith in God, the faith in humanity, 
the faith in the moral law, the faith in providence, the 
faith in the soul's future, on anything so precarious as a 
single collection of documents ? to stake these vast con- 
cerns, we may say, on the interpretation of a chapter 
or the rendering of a text, on the reading of a comment- 
ator, the conjecture of a philologist, the decision of a 
new grammar or dictionary ? a faith that a Gesenius or 
a Max Miiller may undermine, that a Strauss or a Renan 
may sap ; is that a faith for men to put their trust in ? 
That thousands do put their trust in it is all too plain, 
and the sorrow that comes of it, the unbelief and de- 
spair, when the proof they deemed immovable is shaken, 
testify to the folly of their proceeding. The assaults on 
the Bible have been taken as assaults on religion, and 
religion has crumbled when the Bible has given way 
under attack. The snapping of that single-stranded cord 
has put in jeopardy the whole celestial freight. 

The Romanist exults in the catastrophe. It is just 
what I predicted, he says, it could not be otherwise. 
" The Bible is a book ; if you allow people to read it for 
themselves, they will read it variously ; in the multitude 
of interpretations the sense will be lost, controversies will 
arise, sects will spring up from the controversies ; the 
unity of the faith will be broken, the harmony of the 
spirit will be destroyed, the authority of the Word will 
be lost, the assurance of the soul's destiny will be taken 
away, and skepticism, unbelief, rationalism, materialism, 



14 THE SAFEST CREED. 

atheism, will come in like a flood. Experience proves 
the truth of the prophecy. Under Protestantism, Chris- 
tianity is running out ; religion itself is perishing ; it has 
come to its last term, the next step will be into utter 
atheism." 

" The only safety," the Romanist goes on to say, " is 
the Church that never changes ; that is the same yester- 
day, to-day and forever ; that is, indeed, founded on a 
rock ; older than the New Testament, resting on apostles 
and evangelists, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cor- 
nerstone, it is unassailable by the forces of the enemy. 
The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." But have 
there been no departures from the Church? Does the 
Church really stand the test of criticism ? Is there no 
such thing as history ? and does history justify the 
churchman's claim of divine authority for his institution ? 
Is the Church purely and demonstrably the work of 
Divine Providence ? Have human wit and witlessness, 
human will and willfulness, had no part in its creation ? 
Does its story, from beginning to end, justify its title to 
rule over the consciences, and prescribe the faith, and 
lead the hopes of mankind ? Has it never been a story 
of diplomacy savoring of cunning, of authority asserting 
itself as despotism and making itself chargeable with 
bloody crimes, of privilege to teach used for the purpose 
of fastening on the minds of men dogmas like that of the 
Immaculate Conception of the Yirgin Mary, and the in- 
fallibility of the Yicar of Christ ? 

The Church has not proved to be a safe refuge. The 
desertions from it on account of its well-known unsea- 
worthiness, have been by the hundred thousand, and it 
is a remarkable circumstance that, of those that have 
abandoned it, a great multitude have lapsed into utter 



THE SAFEST CREED. 15 

irreligion. Everything goes down with that one bark. 
Look at the condition of Italy ; look at the condition of 
Spain; both countries where Romanism has been supreme, 
both countries in which Romanism has been identified 
with religion. The type of disbelief in these two lands 
is of the most stubborn and deadly kind. The religious 
sentiment seems well-nigh dead there. Atheism, in the 
dreariest form, abounds ; materialism, of the most literal 
and prosaic description, is common ; the interest in what 
we call spiritual, that is, in ideal things, has so far de- 
clined as to be regarded with pity and even with ridicule, 
as the remnant of an outgrown superstition. The world 
has lost its poetic aspect, life has lost its poetical expres- 
sion. The sensual element is getting the upper hand ; 
politics are all engrossing, and the tone of politics is low. 

The Romanist admits all this, and cries : " See the 
effect of leaving the Church ! See what comes of aban- 
doning the only ark of safety ! " Yes, but the evil hap- 
pens because the people were taught that the Church 
was the only ark of safety ; and when they left it, as they 
needs must, it having become impossible for them to re- 
main in it longer as honest people, there was no alterna- 
tive but drowning. They had no lifeboats, and had never 
learned to swim or float in the open sea. 

No creed is safe that rests on a single foundation, 
however ancient and imposing. The moment comes 
when the swiftly flowing river of time loosens the corner- 
stone, and then the whirling travelers are plunged into 
an abyss. The safety of rationalism consists in its ability 
to use all supports and adapt itself to all emergencies ; 
its hands are free, it is foot-loose ; it has full possession 
of its powers, and full command of the field for their ex- 
ercise. It is never without resources, it cannot be re- 



16 THE SAFEST CREED. 

duced to extremity ; it cannot be driven into a corner. 
If one reliance gives way, it has a dozen to fall back on ; 
if one argument fails, it shifts its position to another. It 
has trenches within trenches, lines within lines, walls be- 
hind walls. Take away the Old Testament, it has the 
New ; take away the Bible, it has the sacred writings of 
other races ; invalidate these, it has the religions senti- 
ment to which all Scriptures give expression ; throw 
doubt on the religious sentiment, it has recourse to the 
facts of human experieuce, as revealed by the history of 
nations, and the result of individual lives ; it appeals to 
the long line of tradition common to the race of man — 
traditions of worship and faith, of moral obedience and 
fidelity, of sweetest trust and sublimest anticipation ; call 
these in question, it takes up the method of science, 
and shows how divine things are wrought into the very 
texture of the material world ; does the scientific man 
protest against the use made of his apparatus, rational- 
ism retreats to the stronghold of philosophy from which 
it cannot be dislodged. 

The rationalist fears nothing. " If his bark sink, 'tis 
to another sea," whose waters are more tranquil, whose 
gales are less violent, whose shores are not rough with 
reefs that menace the mariner with destruction. So far 
as ports of refuge are concerned, his is the safest creed. 

I contend that it is the safest, too, from its own con- 
stitution. It has no articles that are put in jeopardy by 
the action of human nature in its normal movements. 
It teaches no dogmas that are at variance with the es- 
tablished laws of reason. Its G-od is not a larger man, 
with human limitations and infirmities, subject to emo- 
tions as we are, a mechanician, a contriver, a person 
conducting the affairs of the universe by methods of di- 



THE SAFEST CREED. 17 

plomacy, resorting to expedients, altering and suspending 
his own laws, repairing his own handiwork, showing par- 
tiality in his treatment of his children, granting to some 
the fullness of light and leaving others in total darkness, 
electing special tribes and individuals to glory and doom- 
ing others to perdition. Rationalism regards God as 
truly the Infinite and Eternal, and interprets him by the 
largest constructions that the human mind can put on 
his works, stripping off whatever is offensive to the finest 
intelligence and winning thought to the conception of 
him instead of repelling it, thus making human reason 
its friend. 

It does not deify an individual; it does not vilify the 
race; it casts no aspersion on the natural faculties, but 
puts itself as cordially as possible in communication with 
the wisest, the profoundest, the most sagacious of earth's 
thinkers. There is no danger, therefore, that the march of 
mind will sweep it out of the way or leave it behind in 
the distance. It has not to defend itself against history, 
science, or philosophy ; they are its defenders. The 
single circumstance of its being unwilling to commit it- 
self to any single statement or definition, its willingness to 
shape and reshape its formulas in accordance with the 
growing intelligence of the race, its creedlessness, in 
other words, is a great safeguard. Its confidence in the 
spirit of truth is worth a thousand confidences in separate 
opinions, for the spirit of truth drops its forms as fast as 
they become useless or obsolete, and leaves on all the 
bushes by the wayside the cast-off skins of its creeds. 

Nearly every dogma of theology — it is safe to say every 
dogma of the popular theology — stands to-day on the de- 
fensive against the prevailing reason of the age. Trinity, 
Deity of Christ, Atonement, Election, Justification, Hell 



18 THE SAFEST CREED. 

and Heaven, all are in this painful category. The first 
principles of revealed religion are challenged. They who 
hold them are in danger of defeat, and defeat, in hun- 
dreds of cases, implies, the loss of everything dear 
to the religious mind. Surely that is the safest creed 
which can venture to cast off its armor, and throw its 
weapons down, and consort peacefully with thoughtful 
people, and feel secure in the honest sympathy of earnest, 
liberal men. 

But rationalism has a stronger guarantee of safety yet, 
in tli at it puts itself in friendliest relations with the hu- 
man heart. Here, indeed, is a fortress from which it can- 
not be dislodged. Its idea of the essential rectitude of 
human nature propitiates the instinctive feelings of all 
men ; its faith in progress commends itself to the earnest 
approval of all who cherish noble hopes for their kind ; 
its faith in the vital unity of mankind comes home to all 
philanthropists and reformers, to all industrial and other 
workers at the social problems that exercise the mind of 
the generation ; its faith in the past authenticates every 
grand character and sanctifies every glorious memory ; its 
faith in the present is stimulating to every fine purpose ; 
its faith in the future encourages every far-seeing antici- 
pation ; its faith in the long future, in the hereafter, en- 
lists the sympathies of those who live in their dreams of 
affection. Rationalism, in fact, deserves more than any 
other to be called the religion of the heart, because it le- 
gitimates most completely the heart's vital desires. 

Can this be claimed for the faith of Christendom ? 
Can it be claimed for the doctrine of human inability ? 
Can it be claimed for the doctrine of regeneration ? Can 
it be claimed for the doctrine of immortality, which limits 
the boon to Christian believers, and even to the compar- 



THE SAFEST CREED. 19 

atively small class of Christian believers who have ex- 
perienced the supernatural change which entitles them to 
the blessedness of the redeemed, the rest being cast into 
the outer darkness, where the wailing and gnashing of 
teeth is incessant, where the worm dieth not, and the 
fire is not quenched? 

The popular doctrine of the hereafter cannot be aban- 
doned by those who hold the other points of the " evan- 
gelical " creed, for it supposes them all. It is to effect 
the rescue of the entire human family from hell that the 
scheme of salvation was devised ; and if the hell is abol- 
ished, or reduced in compass, or mitigated in character, 
if it is altered in any respect, the scheme of salvation is 
unnecessary ; the atonement is needless, the incarnation 
loses its purpose ; the Church, as an institution, has no 
reason for being. Therefore the great preachers of 
" evangelical " religion cleave to the doctrine in all its 
original features. They stir up the flames, re-animate 
the demons, and proclaim the destiny of everlasting fire 
to the unbelievers. In so doing they are consistent and 
logical. They cannot do otherwise and maintain their 
position. 

But they have the human heart against them. All deep- 
ly feeling men and women struggle, writhe, and, if they 
do not rebel, bleed. That the heart of man consents to 
entertain the belief in a hereafter under such conditions, 
and with such an understanding, is a mystery. Does it ? 
Does not the heart's steady, firm, unanimous protest op- 
erate as the most stubborn and formidable foe to the ex- 
tension of the whole " evangelical " faith ? It is hard to 
overcome the resistance of reason to doctrines that seem 
inconsistent with the first principles of thought ; but to 
overcome the opposition of the natural affections to doc- 



20 THE SAFEST CREED. 

trines that outrage natural feeling is more than all 
churches and preachers can do. For my part, I do not 
hesitate to say, nor should I think that any reasonable 
man would hesitate to say, that he would be a benefactor 
of his race who would deliver people from the popular 
doctrine of the hereafter, even at the expense of denying 
any hereafter. If immortality is to be a helpless and 
unmitigated curse to anybody, then annihilation would 
be a boon to all. So says the heart, instructed in the 
humanities by the worthiest teachers. The heart of man 
would prefer to have no future if it is not promised a 
future which it can load with hope. To the heart, the 
future means hope ; it is the land of hope. We may 
fashion the form of the hope to suit our own anticipation, 
desire, or longing, but hope it must be still. A hopeless 
future is something inconceivable. They who despair of 
the hereafter make despair a kind of hope ; they enjoy 
a " luxury of woe." But they who live on that luxury 
probably look no further than annihilation. The luxury 
of endless burning, either for himself or his friends, it 
may safely be assumed that no mortal ever dwelt on in 
fancy. 

ISTo creed is safe that places itself in antagonism to the 
natural human heart. Sooner or later it must go down. 
The heart will triumph ; and it will triumph by either con- 
verting the creed or destroying it. In this case, conver- 
sion is destruction. To abolish hell is to reconstruct the 
spiritual universe ; and this is the work that is going on. 

It is often said of rationalists that they are " all out at 
sea." It is true, they are, and they rejoice in being so. 
Out on the wide ocean of truth they are safe. There they 
have the benefit of all the winds that blow, and room 
enough; no sunken rocks threaten; no fog-covered reef 



THE SAFEST CREED. 21 

endangers; above them is the whole canopy of the heav- 
ens. The navigator dreads the coast. He keeps off 
shore in a storm. Tew ships are lost in the open sea. The 
coast line has the perils. 

The rationalist dreads definitions, doubles the watch 
when approaching land, and looks ont for breakers. He 
is on the voyage. His ship is built for the ocean, not for 
the dock, and ont on the ocean he is at home. Arrival is 
necessary, no ship is always at sea, but arrival is inciden- 
tal and occasional. He touches port that he may put 
out to sea again, and be in company with Him, " Whose 
being is a great deep." 



n. 

THE KADICAL BELIEF. 

Having the same Spirit of Faith, in which one said, "I believed and 
therefore spoke," we also believe and therefore speak.— 2 Cor. iv, 13. 

r | 1HESE are words of Paul, the one doubted, suspected, 
-""- persecuted apostle ; the outsider who came inside on 
grounds against which many protested; the insider who 
carried outside a faith which many repudiated ; the 
man who announced the gospel of the spirit and preached 
justification by faith alone, and at the same time declared 
that he worshiped the God of his fathers, "after the 
manner called heresy." He believed and therefore spoke. 
If he had not believed, he would not have spoken, for he 
would have had nothing to say. All earnest speech is 
uttered in faith. In faith all good work is done. Unbe- 
lief has no gospel, makes no confession, frames no creed, 
organizes no worship, brings no sacrifice. If men deem 
it worth their while to preach, will do the amount of 
studying and thinking that qualifies them for it, are 
prepared for the many difficulties, discouragements, re- 
buffs, misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and humil- 
iations that attend it, show themselves ready to submit to 
the disabilities and sacrifices that so thankless an office 
entails, it is to be presumed that they have something 
to say that is very dear to them, and is, in their judgment, 
very important to their neighbors. If they seem to be 
deniers, they only seem so in the eyes of those who fail 
to recognize the affirmation their denial contains. 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 23 

It is conceded that every affirmation holds a denial in 
its bosom. Whoever says " Yes," at the same time says 
"No." To announce a belief is to announce, though 
silently, an unbelief in something the belief excludes. To 
make a declaration of faith is to repudiate some oppo- 
sing declaration which somebody else has put forth. The 
believer in Moses and the prophets tacitly rejects the tra- 
ditions of Egypt ; the believer in the Christ by that act 
renounces the anti-Christ ; to affirm God is to discard 
atheism ; to affirm the soul is. to put materialism away ; 
to affirm immortality is to disclaim the doctrine of anni- 
hilation. This being conceded, why should it not also 
be conceded that every denial holds in its bosom an af- 
firmation ? Does not every one who says " No," at the 
same time say " Yes % " To declare against a belief, 
may it not be to announce, though silently, a belief 
which the discarded article could not hold ? To repu- 
diate a well-known declaration of faith, may it not be to 
prepare the way for, may it not be to shadow forth, an- 
other declaration larger and clearer ? To put aside 
Moses and the prophets may imply a putting forward of 
the Christ. To deny the Christ may be an affirmation 
of Jesus. To place in the background the historical 
Jesus may be to bring the spiritual Jesus into the fore- 
ground. He who says " No " to the Trinity says " Yes '' 
to the Unity. He who disavows hell avows heaven. He 
pulls down as a preparation for building, and, before he 
begins to pull down, the plans of the new building lie 
already finished on his table. Every earnest teacher has 
his positive aim, and his positive aim is his real aim. 
He denies in the interest of truth. He destroys in the 
interest of conservation. He believes and therefore 
speaks. 



24 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

I should not urge so simple a thought as this if it were 
not of very vital consequence. Until it is seen that denial 
implies belief as truly as belief implies denial, no discus- 
sion in regard to belief and denial can go on. And in 
order that this may be seen, the popular modes of think- 
ing must undergo a change. At present the largest 
creeds seem to be the most negative, the broadest beliefs 
the most unbelieving, the deepest , affirmations the most 
abrupt denials. Not he that believes least is the infidel, 
but he that believes most. The most spiritual view of 
Christianity is regarded as a rejection of Christianity. To 
believe in too much God is held to be equivalent to believ- 
ing in none. The atheist, according to the vulgar preju- 
dice, is the man who proclaims a living God ! A Conser- 
vative said lately to a Radical : " You believe so much 
that you believe nothing." 

We need not go far to seek the explanation of this sin- 
gular paradox. For a couple of thousand years Christendom 
has been in the habit of associating belief with a certain 
historical tradition. He only was recognized as a builder 
who piled his material on the foundations laid by the 
Church, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone. To 
reject this was to reject everything. To believe anything 
else than this, anything aside from this, anything other, 
anything more; to believe, however comprehensively, 
earnestly, deeply, vitally, was to believe nothing, was, in 
fact, utter unbelief. So long as this prejudice lasts — for a 
prejudice I must call it — no justice will ever be rendered 
to liberal believers. They will always be misapprehended. 
Their affirmations will go for nothing. Their belief will 
be called skepticism, and infidelity will be the kindest 
name given to their faith. As that prejudice declines and 
passes away, as it is rapidly doing under the influence of 
intelligence, the doubters, provers, deniers come to their 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 25 

rights, and the beliefs of the unbelievers are recognized as 
being what they are. 

Questions of belief and unbelief continue to intensely 
interest mankind. They are more fascinating than any 
questions of practice which seem to be of greater moment. 
Where these latter attract a few scores of people, the for- 
mer attract thousands. The chief event of interest in our 
small circle during the last week was the conference of 
Unitarian and other Christian churches, and the most 
attractive feature in the conference was the discussion 
between the conservative and the radical parties on the 
common ground of Christian faith. The matter was quite 
incidental. It was almost irrelevant. The churches came 
together not to debate theological issues, but to arrange 
plans for practical work. There were many things to be 
considered : the occupation of new fields, the organization 
of societies, the building of churches, the endowment of 
schools, the maintenance of colleges, the printing of books, 
the support of missionaries, the reform of social abuses, 
the removal of social evils, the rescue of the imperiled, the 
relief of the perishing, the saving of the lost ; but none of 
these great practical concerns secured the attention, enlisted 
the feeling, stirred the emotions, as did this apparently 
unprofitable talking. Crowds flocked to it, precious hours 
were devoted to it ; the greater number of the delegates 
and attendants evidently felt that it involved the most mo- 
mentous issues that were presented. Let us hope that this 
feeling deserves a better name than curiosity to hear spas- 
modic eloquence, or delight in witnessing a gladiatorial 
encounter, or the idle and unprincipled enjoyment of see- 
ing one party or another beaten by a vote. Deeper than 
all this, though this was most frequently avowed, was, I 
doubt not, the persuasion that beneath all practice lay 
belief ; that belief was the basis of noble action of what- 



26 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

ever kind ; that only as men believed would they speak ; 
that only as men believed would they work; that the 
question of belief being unanswered, other questions must 
wait ; that the question of belief being answered, other 
questions would instantly answer themselves. 

At all events, whatever the feeling of the participants 
of the conference, this is the universal persuasion, that life 
is grounded in faith ; that a faithless life must be a foolish 
one ; that a positive faith must declare itself in deeds. 
The Romanist tries to prove that Protestantism demoral- 
izes, disintegrates, and subverts society. The Protestant 
argues that Unitarianism necessarily results in anarchy. 
The Unitarian charges on the liberal doctrine a tendency 
to unsettle the foundations of morality, and each believer, 
in turn, while thus discrediting the moral bearings of his 
neighbor's opinions, claims that the best results will flow 
from his own. His claim may be unsupported, but he 
would be stultified if he did not make it. 

Of the proceedings of that conference it is not my pur- 
pose now to speak. I declined being officially present, 
though fully entitled to be on every ground, because I 
knew that the two parties were not and could not be in 
sympathy, and because, with that knowledge, it seemed 
better for the party that was in the minority to withdraw. 
I would not thrust myself in where I was not wanted, and 
I would not embarrass those who had a work of their own 
to do in which it was not possible for me to join. There 
were vital principles enough to serve as a basis for a cor- 
dial union in faith and work. Intelligent, educated, 
experienced men and women, who know, respect, honor, 
and confide in one another ; who agree in all their moral 
and spiritual ideas ; who share with one another the con- 
viction that character, not opinion, insures felicity ; who 
are of one mind as regards the elements of character and 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 27 

the means of obtaining it ; who have the same standards 
of private and public virtue, the same views regarding the 
constitution and well-being of society, the same convic- 
tions touching the laws and conditions of a perfect social 
state ; men and women who cherish the same moral and 
spiritual conceptions of God, the same moral and spiritual 
conceptions of Jesus, the same confidence in the ultimate 
destination of man, the same trust in Providence, the same 
visions of eternity, the same assurance of the divine Fath- 
erhood, the same yearning after a brotherhood of men, 
certainly ought to be able to assemble peacefully and work 
harmoniously, leaving theological questions in entire abey- 
ance. But if they will not do this, if they will insist on 
making speculative opinions the ground of fellowship, 
then should either party do its best to make known what 
its speculative opinions are, not shading them away at the 
edges, but sharply defining them at the centre, going to 
the roots of faith, and not fanning the air with its branch- 
es, or tickling the sense with the odor of its blossoms. 
Honor requires frankness, and if frankness leads to part- 
ing, then let the party be in certainty that thus to part is 
wiser than a fair-spoken but ungenuine meeting. 

As one of the Radicals I am here this morning to state, 
not by any means all the details (that would be an inter- 
minable task), but the fundamental principles of the faith 
in whose interest and in whose inspiration I speak ; for, 
after what has been said, our claim to have a faith must be 
acknowledged. That this faith is, to a certain extent, 
undefinable as yet, and is, to a still greater extent, unde- 
fined, is no objection to its reality or its positiveness. A 
great deal of time is required to define a faith. The creed 
of Christendom has been undergoing definitions for two 
thousand years, and the full statement is not made. It is 
but a short time since the Pope added a new article, that 



28 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

of the Virgin's Immaculate Conception, to the faith of the 
Roman Church. The Protestant theologians in Germany, 
England, America, are busy modifying, restating, recast- 
ing their confessions, giving new interpretations, even to 
the essentials of belief. Dissatisfied with these, the Uni- 
tarians undertake to say once more, and once for all, pre- 
cisely what Christianity is and precisely what it is not. 
There is no unanimity of opinion respecting the Christ, 
his nature, mission, or rule. There is no accord of mind 
in regard to the Godhead, its inner consciousness, its rela- 
tion to humanity, its attitude toward the world. 

Is it fair, then, to demand of a new faith that it shall 
state itself fully in its first utterances ? May not we have a 
generation when Christendom has had two thousand years ? 
Must our imperfections condemn us, when its incomplete- 
ness is no reproach ? Must our vagueness be decisive of 
our falsity, when its hesitancy only proves its truth % Be- 
cause Ave cannot in half an hour say all we have to say, 
must it be declared that we have nothing to say whatever ? 
The new faith will get articulated by and by ; wait and 
you will see what it is ; at present we will give such hints 
of it as we can. 

I. In the first place, then, we affirm the existence of the 
religious sentiment in man. We declare that man is a 
religious being, worshiping from an impulse of his nature, 
believing from the necessity of his constitution, yearning, 
hoping, loving, aspiring, because an instinct within him 
prompts him to do so. While his natural affections attach 
him to persons ; while his moral sentiments vitally con- 
nect him with society; his spiritual sentiments of awe, 
wonder, adoration, gratitude, impel him to cast his thought 
and feeling abroad toward the invisible, which is also to 
him the perfect. This motion upward, with its sense of 
trust, its emotion of prayer, this impulse towards perfec- 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 29 

tion, is inborn in self-conscious men. It was not a creation 
of the priests, though the priests have taken advantage of 
it for their purposes. It was not a device of rulers, though 
rulers, too, have made use of it in order to enslave man- 
kind. It is not the offspring of ignorance, for it outlives 
it. It is the prophecy and the pledge of a higher, even a 
spiritual inward and eternal life. 

Comte tell us that religion is a feature of the world's 
childhood. If it is, humanity is still a child, and will be 
a child for ages to come not to be counted. As mankind 
advances in intelligence, knowledge, culture, they do not 
become less religious, but rather more so. Goethe, one of 
the capacious minds of the w r orld, w r as a magnificent be- 
liever and worshiper, as all who read his writings know. 
It was he that spoke of the material universe as the u gar- 
ment" of Deity. Plato was no rudimental man, j-et the 
religious sentiment in him kept full pace with his philo- 
sophic march, it even outstripped his swift intelligence. 
Bacon and Newton were no babes ; but they burst into the 
Infinite only to kneel. Milton and Dante had outgrown 
the swaddling-clothes of the race ; yet in what temples 
they adored ! before what ideal forms they bent their 
heads ! Kant and Fichte, and Hegel and Schleiermacher 
and Herder, surely had outlived the crudest forms of in- 
telligence ; but in what hopes and on what aspirations they 
lived ! The age of science is still the age of faith. As I 
open the pages of the great explorers and discoverers, even 
in the world of matter, I find that in proportion to their 
earnestness is their reverence, their trust, their anticipation. 
They do not pray, perhaps, but they revere ; they do not 
write confessions, but they avow principles ; they call God 
the unknown and unknowable, but they have the tender- 
est veneration for his immanent being ; they bring no gifts 
to his altar, but they devote themselves to unfolding his 



30 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

laws. The last thing that Comte himself did, was to re- 
construct religion at the bidding of his heart. 

The churchman treats the religious sentiment as if it 
was a tiny glimmering spark in the bosom, which he must 
tend and feed lest it become extinct, or else a wild flaring 
flame, which he must confine within his enclosure that it 
may steadily burn. He says to men : " But for me you 
would become animals — but for me your souls would die. 
Desert my altars, leave my communion, neglect my pray- 
ers, abandon my sacraments, withdraw from the protection 
of my arms, and your spirits will droop and languish." 
We say to the churchman : " Nay, quite otherwise ; it is 
to this religious sentiment you patronize that you owe 
your own existence; you are not its master, but its servant 
and creature : it articulates your creed, voices your choirs, 
hallows your altars, springs the arches of your cathedrals, 
breathes the power into your apostles, inspires your proph- 
ets, sanctifies your saints ; your establishments rise and 
fall with its tides of feeling. When this creative senti- 
ment is low, your mechanism creaks and groans ; when it 
is high, you have much ado to prevent it carrying you and 
your apparatus away." 

The religions of the earth, past and present, are not, in 
our judgment, supernaturally and miraculously instituted 
for the training and education of the religious sentiment, 
but are efforts of the religious sentiment itself to find 
God, to express its thoughts of Him, and to pour out to 
Him its desires. They attest its power, not its weakness. 
There could be no Buddhism or Brahinanism, no Parsee- 
ism or Zoroastrism, no Mosaism or Christianism, or Mo- 
hammedanism, were there not a spiritual nature to create 
them. The saints and saviours vouch for the reality of 
the soul. Had man not been a religious being he would 
never have prayed ; had the religious part of him been 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 31 

feeble, his prayers would not have fashioned the mountains 
into temples, constructed oratorios, built organs, or lifted 
holy men above all the glooms and glories of the earth. 

Among rude people, in rude times, the religious senti- 
ment iinds very uncouth and ugly expression. Its rites are 
hideous, and even, it seems to us, degrading. It lurks in 
frightful caverns ; it hallows ill-omened birds and reptiles ; 
it feeds horrid idols with children's blood. It appears as 
that dreadful thing called Superstition. But all things 
great and beautiful begin in ugliness. Compare the ear- 
liest Christian art with the masterpieces of Raphael ; con- 
trast the science of the middle ages with that of our own 
day. From what rough beginnings philosophy and litera- 
ture have grown to be the glorious creations they are. 
Cultivated people have cultivated religious. As humanity 
matures its faith matures. It thinks more worthily, trusts 
more sweetly, believes more rationally, worships more 
purely. Its idols disappear, its temples expand, its forms 
become light, variable, ethereal, its beliefs spiritual, its 
charities wide, its hospitality generous. The idea takes 
the place of the dogma, the principle is substituted for 
the ordinance, life is set before opinion. As the science, 
literature, art, philosophy of a people are, such will be the 
religion ; crude and ugly when they are — noble and beauti- 
ful when that character belongs to them. As noxious 
weeds give place to flowers and shrubs and fruit-bearing 
trees ; as poisonous reptiles disappear before higher organ- 
izations of form, so do the idolatries and superstitions, the 
errors and terrors of a brutal age, perish when intellectual 
light comes in. The religions of mankind are milestones 
that indicate the progress of the race. 

II. The religious sentiment throws out the thought of 
God. The Radical believes in God in the most positive, 
cordial, and determined manner. Kot in the God of any 



32 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

particular church or confession ; not in the God of the 
Romanist, the Protestant, or the technical " Christian " ; 
not in any special or individual God ; not, let me saj, in a 
God, but simply and only in God. He has no thought, he 
cannot think of a God who is in time and space, who con- 
secrates temples or sanctifies exceptional hours, who lurks 
behind altars, nestles in creeds, or inspires officials ; who 
created the world in six days, and had to make it over 
again, and at last died himself that it might not finally 
perish ; who peeps into his earth through holes in a con- 
cealing curtain, tears up his own roads and mines his own 
bridges in order to visit his own children in the city he 
has provided for them ; throws into confusion his own 
press- work and breaks up his own forms in order to make 
himself more intelligible than he was when every letter 
was in place ; who appears to an individual Moses, Sam- 
uel, or Isaiah, haunts the dreams of devout men, and rises 
upon the vision of pious women ; a God who listens to 
private prayers and takes an interest in private fortunes, 
and selects tribes or nations for special favors, and vouch- 
safes his witness to this or the other generation, and prints 
books for his favorite tribe of men. The God of Abra- 
ham, and Isaac, and Jacob the Radical knows not ; he 
knows only God. 

Of this Being he does not attempt, he does not dare to 
attempt a definition ; rather, be tries to break through all 
definition, that He may be absolutely without bound or 
limitation, pure spirit, pure intelligence, the fullest ideal 
of possibility, the fairest dream of the soul. 

The more definitions the better, if there must be defi- 
nition at all ; welcome all there are or can be, rather than 
rest in any one. Let the Trinitarian throw light, if he 
can, on the mystery of the divine consciousness ; let the 
Unitarian illustrate the harmony of the divine order ; let 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 33 

tlie Scientist show God as permanent in the world of mat- 
ter ; let the Transcendentalist show him as indwelling in 
the world of spirit. Come, Spinoza, and tell ns of the God 
who is the substance of things ; come, Hegel, and tell us 
of the God who unfolds himself in history, and in human- 
ity becomes conscious ; come, artist, come, poet, and tell 
us of God as the Soul of the world ; come, Spencer, and 
tell us of the Unknown and Unknowable ; come, Vache- 
rot, and tell us of God the Ideal, the vision of the enlight- 
ened intelligence. We want you all; for all together you 
will not sufficiently declare what the Infinite is ; all to- 
gether you will not succeed in flinging too many lights 
upon the bosom of the great Deep. We need the multi- 
tude of your thoughts to save us from the tyranny of a 
single creed. 

Of the moral attributes of God, the Radical hesitates also 
to speak. Indeed, he dislikes the word " attributes," as 
implying faculties distinct from being. He does not say 
that God is loving, but that he is Love. It is not enough 
to say that He is wise, for He is wisdom ; or that He is just, 
for He is justice ; or that He is good, for He is goodness ; 
or that He is merciful, for He is mercy. To this believer's 
mind, it is inconceivable that God should show favoritism 
or partiality ; that He should hate, loathe, forget, or for- 
sake a living creature ; that He should hold any outcast 
for opinion ; that He should hold any outcast for any cause 
whatsoever ; that He should dig a hell big enough to hold 
an insect, or erect a barrier that would shut out a bird. 

The Radical's God is simply a dream of all conceivable 
perfection, the perfect thought, will, care, providence, in 
whom none die, but in whom all who live at all, live and 
move and have their being. 

I wish I could use stronger words than these to say 
what I mean, I wish there were any other form of speech 

2* 



3tt THE BADICAL BELIEF. 

to convince you how earnestly I mean it. God is ; not 
lias been, or will be ; and He is infinitely more than the 
best believe or the happiest hope. 

III. Next we say that God reveals himself. The Eadical 
believes in Revelation. JSTot in incidental or particular 
revelations ; not in peculiar individual revelation ; but in 
Revelation. It is a necessity of the Divine Being that 
He should reveal himself. He is light, and light must 
shine because it is light. He is love, and it is the nature 
of love to flow out. God cannot hide, disappear, veil, or 
withdraw himself. He spoke creation into existence, and 
creation is his articulated word. Nature is not a curtain 
dropped before his face, but the visible glory of his face. 
The natural universe is not a screen behind which He hides, 
but the ether whose waves render Him visible. Our own 
closed eyelids, and they alone, conceal God. 

Revelation is the opening of our eyes. The natural eye 
— trained, tutored, and taught — looks directly into God's 
countenance, and sees as much of Him as sense can see, 
in the transcendent loveliness of earth, sea, sky ; revelation 
of this breaking in successively with increase of perception 
and closeness of study. The intellectual eye opens and 
discerns wonders before unsuspected, wonders of law 
system, order, harmony, in whose presence thought stands 
enchanted. The moral eye opens, and new realms of deity 
appear in the awful forms of truth, obedience, duty, by 
which the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong. The 
spiritual eye opens last, and lo ! the Godhead widens on 
man's view ; regions of benignity lie all about us ; flowers 
of tenderness bloom in the bleak spaces of the universe ; 
tendrils of pity and graciousness twine around the iron 
clamps and rods of law; there is a loving radiance in the 
sunbeam ; there are soft tears in the rain ; a sweet purpose 
is seen gliding through the domains of nature and life ; 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 35 

footprints of a boundless good will are detected in all the 
first and latest formations, and God is recognized as 
Father and Mother, as Saviour and never-forgetting 
Friend- 
It will be seen at once why the highest revelations are 
made to the very few. There are very few who have the 
spiritual eye open and clear. Not many enjoy the privi- 
lege of moral vision, for they are not cultivated in it. 
Not many discern much with the eye of intelligence ; nay, 
the multitude perceive nothing distinctly with the eye of 
sense. 

It is as in a picture gallery. A score or so unintelligently 
admire the pictures ; a dozen or two appreciate them ; two 
or three gaze at them with delight, being fully in harmony 
with the artist's soul ; the multitude chat and gossip, or sink 
down wearily in chairs, yawning and wishing to go home 
and get to bed. Yet the souls of Titian and Raphael 
glow in the canvas and offer their wealth to all alike. It is 
no figure of speech that the pure in heart see God. It is no 
bigotry to say that none others can. The fiction of shift- 
ing screens, openings into heaven, rents in nature's cur- 
tain, audible voices in desert or on mountain-tops, hints 
and communications given to eavesdroppers, is too childish 
for mention ; such fancies belong to the second childhood, 
of which we all have the same opinion. The pure in 
heart see God face to face. There is no keyhole or crack 
in the wall, or small preternatural aperture through which 
any others can get a glimpse of Him. The pure in heart, 
wherever they are, and whoever, whether Pagan, Chris- 
tian, Turk, or Jew, whether of the olden time or of 
to-day, whether men of Jerusalem or men of New York, 
whether priests or philosophers, prophets or cobblers, 
ministers or menials, men, matrons, or maids, the pure in 
heart, and none others, see God. 



"6 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

IV. The Radical believes in Christianity as lie under- 
stands it ; not as the only religion, by any means, not as 
the absolute or final religion, not as the best religion for 
all men, not as the finest expression of the religious senti- 
ment, but as the most worthy form of it yet manifest. 
Christianity, as vulgarly interpreted, the Christianity of 
the Greek church, of the Roman church, of the English 
church, of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, of the 
Arminian and Socinian churches, he rejects utterly as 
compatible neither with reason, philosophy, science, nor 
even with the earliest prophecies of their own faith. 
Their traditions, dogmas, ordinances, forms of worship, 
theories of human nature, human society, and human life, 
creeds, definitions, confessions, practices, sentiments, be- 
liefs, hopes, purposes, anticipations, are, one and all, and 
for the same reasons, unacceptable, being mainly grotesque 
and unintelligible representations, which distort or corrupt 
the ideas they may embody. 

To the Radical Christianity is dear as implying purity 
of moral standard, sweetness of spiritual graces, tender- 
ness and strength of personal and social aspiration, hope- 
fulness in regard to human destiny, affection ateness as a 
faith of the heart. He loves it for its feeling towards God 
and the world, not for its instruction respecting God and 
the world. Greatest of the world's faiths, religion of the 
most advanced races and of the most modern men, the 
modern mind must spiritualize and refine Christianity 
very much before it can accept it, and even then, for 
many important things — for knowledge, for practical prin- 
ciples, for working beliefs — -must go outside of it wholly. 

The Christianity of the Radical is so attenuated as not 
to be recognized by popular Christendom, but it is not so 
attenuated as to be to him merely a shadow. It is still a 
substance, a real thing to his soul. But it is a thing which 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 37 

he naturally appropriates, not a tiling by which lie allows 
himself to be appropriated. 

Y. The Radical believes in Jesus. Not in "the Christ," 
but in Jesus, as the highest expression of the religious 
sentiment in human form ; yes, on the whole, the highest 
manifestation of God. The human form offers the grand- 
est opportunity for the divine manifestation. There is no 
symbol so perfect as man, the last development of creative 
power, the most complete exposition of creative wisdom 
and love. We see God imperfectly till we see Him in the 
human form ; and in no human form do we see so much 
of Him as we do in the form of Jesus, as that appears 
spiritualized to our thoughts. 

Jt is not the Jesus of the creeds that the Radical believes 
in. It is not the Jesus of the Church. It is not the Jesus 
of the New Testament, for the New Testament puts words 
into his mouth which no sweet soul can utter, and thoughts 
into his mind which no enlightened reason can entertain. 
We know how the record of his life was made, we know 
what foreign elements came in, we know how the partisans 
of his own and after times tried to represent him as favor- 
ing their views and originating their schemes. We there- 
fore search and sift, endeavoring to extricate the image 
from the ooze and rubbish that have accumulated upon it, 
and retouch its spiritual lineaments, soiled and all but 
effaced. That> a divine soul was here is evident; how 
divine, his contemporaries did not see. But the spiritual 
sense of mankind attests him as being one of God's 
brightest manifestations. 

We do not bow the knee to Jesus or sit submissively at 
his feet ; we do not pray to him ; he is not our lord and 
sovereign master. We do not call him Saviour, Redeemer, 
sole Mediator, and Judge. We do not make him the only 
foundation or corner-stone of our faith. He is the child 



38 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

of human nature, not its king. The heart does not subjecl 
itself to him ; it accepts him, authenticates him, places him 
on his seat of honor, crowns him with his fame. What 
he is reported to have said inconsistent with, its best feel- 
ing it refuses to believe that he did say ; the ideas that are 
ascribed to him at variance with its conviction it declines 
to credit him with. It sees in him the expression of its 
highest feeling, and is encouraged, cheered, invigorated, 
consoled by the persuasion that in him its highest feeling 
has been realized. 

But, thinking of Jesus, the Radical's thought flies in- 
stantly to his brothers. That he glorifies them is the great 
reflection ; that in him their nature is disclosed ; that he is 
the flower of their ugly stem ; that in their slime this 
fair plant had its root. He is the natural man. The 
Radical, therefore, instead of fixing his gaze on Jesus as a 
superhuman person, turns it tenderly on the people about 
him, as being, by this testimony, human. It is no easy 
thing to do. To see the glory of Jesus,, is easy enough. 
To call hirn divine, whe cannot do as much ? The murder- 
er, the ruffian, the traitor will do that. This confession 
comes lightly from the coarsest mouths. But how many 
draw the inference ? How many say of this drunkard, 
this thief, his victim of last and passion, this poor, ill-born 
creature : He is one of those to whom Jesus was kin ? 
The glory of the Son of Man touches this dust, irradiates 
and should animate this clay ! Be careful, lest your scorn 
or bitterness prevent its being seen ! Be watchful, in 
order that the sunlight of your hope and the dew of your 
pity may fall on the places that need it most. 

What men are we know, and the knowledge is bitter in- 
deed, agonizing, at times almost maddening. What they 
may become, what capacities lie in them, what possibili- 
ties are theirs, we see in this fair shadowv form of Jesus, 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 39 

and we have faith to believe that in this form all may be 
glorified. In this name we stand over the tombs of those 
who are dead in trespasses and sins, and cry: Come 
forth ! 

VI. The Radical believes in Immortality. This is 
another of the grand declarations of the religions natnre 
of man, and, as such, he listens to the assertions of it that 
come from all tribes and centuries ; the heart's anticipa- 
tions, the soul's prophecies, the reason's intuitive demon- 
stration — not because Jesus taught it, for Jesus himself 
received it from the conviction of humanity — not because 
Jesus demonstrated it by rising from the dead, for had not 
men believed in immortality they would never have 
believed that he rose — not because prophets and saints 
have affirmed it, for prophets and saints are but voices 
from the believing heart of the world — not because of 
numerous signs and wonders, apparitions, visions, commu- 
nications, for these, too, imply a faith that such things 
may be, and give the persuasion that they are what they 
seem to be — not for any or all of these superficial reasons, 
but for a reason deeper than any or all — namely, that the 
religious nature asseverates, and has always asseverated 
the truth ; that the more it is enlightened the more posi- 
tively it asseverates it; that the greatest souls have been 
most confident of it ; that while the critical and practical 
have denied, the saintly and illuminated have affirmed ; 
that the loftiest intelligences, like Plato, have given it 
clearest annunciation ; that grandest souls, like Socrates, 
have borne most confidently on it their weight ; that love- 
liest hearts, like Jesus, have lived in it as in their home. 

The Radical is interested in immortality as a high re- 
ligious belief. Modern Spiritualists claim ocular and tan- 
gible demonstration of the future life ; they are to be 
congratulated on their conviction. But to this bare fact 



40 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

much remains to be added before the faith can take rank 
among the spiritual convictions of mankind. This alone 
does not satisfy the soul. The butcher who, pushing up 
his hat, said : " Once I believed that men and women 
died like cattle, and there was an end of it ; but now, 
damn it, I think no more of dying than of pulling off my 
clothes and going to bed," accepted immortality through 
liis lingers, but not through his soul. It was not a relig- 
ious belief with him ; it meant an incident in his biog- 
raphy, not a crowning glory and achievement of his heart. 
Not from the spiritual nature comes such faith as his. 

The Radical believes in immortality meekly, humbly, 
with a gladness that is tinged with holy fear ; as a boon 
he does not deserve ; a gift he dare not think himself jus- 
tified in snatching ; a glory to be prepared and striven 
for ; a vision to be waited on with reverent looks. 

On this great belief the Radical does not venture to 
dogmatize with narrow interpretations. He desires 
rather that it should be voiced in the most comprehensive 
manner, by the most variously attuned minds. He loves 
to have it presented in all possible aspects, that it may re- 
spond to all states of feeling ; as the craving for continued 
personal existence after death, as the longing for social in- 
tercourse and kindred reunion, as aspiration after unat- 
tained goodness, as thirst for supersensual wisdom, as the 
sigh after more than mortal peace, and, yet further, as 
the generous desire to live still in and through others, 
though individuality be extinguished ; the inspiring and 
unselfish passion to bequeath something to humanity, in 
the way of experience, knowledge, or power, and so to 
continue a living force in mankind. The belief in im- 
mortality takes all these forms according to the minds 
that entertain it. In all of them it appears as a protest 
against the power of death to destroy that which is the 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 41 

most precious part of our personality. The nature of man 
refuses to believe itself wholly perishable, rises in rebellion 
against the dominion of the grave, and claims the privi- 
lege of singing its songs, finishing its education, realizing 
its dream, perpetuating its influence, or completing its 
blessedness in other worlds. 

YII. The Radical believes in as much of the Bible 
as answers to his cultured reason and his matured convic- 
tion, and in no more. He takes what nourishes him, and 
leaves the rest. He reads it as he reads other books, and 
judges it. Inspiration is in intelligence, not in print. 
Scriptural utterances are weighty as the heart authenti- 
cates them. When not thus authenticated they pass for 
naught. The true things in the Bible are not true be- 
cause they are there, they are there because they are true. 
The good things in the Bible were good before they were 
in the Bible, else they would not be good there. The re- 
ligious nature always brings the Book to judgment. The 
orthodox abolitionist wrung from the Old Testament the 
last drop of the virus of slavery before he trusted his con- 
science to it. The Swedenborgian turns the preposterous 
or wicked stories into parables in order to make the Word 
seem divine. The Unitarian compels the Bible to utter 
his opinions before he vouches for its inspiration. The 
Universalist empties the ugly meaning from the ugly texts 
of the New Testament, before he will quote them in proof 
of his belief. 

A refined age rejects the coarseness of the Bible. A 
knowing age rejects the ignorance of it. A moral age 
discards its immoralities. A spiritual age changes its raw 
statements into allegory, or turns away from them alto- 
gether. 

There are many Bibles. All the soul's writings are 
Scriptures, wherever and by whomsoever penned. They 



42 THE RADICAL BELIEF. 

are intended for spiritual eyes, and only what such can 
read in them is true. Humanity continually revises its 
sacred books, comparing them from age to age with the 
inscriptions on the heart, which come out clear under the 
purifying action of experience and the illuminating power 
of culture. Again and again we refer to these, and only 
what these will ultimately verify will stand. 

Such, briefly stated, are the grand articles of the Radi- 
cal's creed ; others there are, of vital importance, which I 
need not mention, for the plain reason that they are com- 
mon to all good men. Faith in the general principles 
of truth and goodness, faith in the moral law, faith in 
recompense and retribution, in the sacredness of duty, the 
ministering power of kindness, the graces of humility, pa- 
tience, meekness, the nobleness of consecration, the joy 
of sacrifice — these, thank heaven, all worthy men and 
women share alike. All good men believe in the good 
life as the acceptable offering, however they may differ as 
to the means of attaining it. Whatever they may think 
of the communion of sinners, they all believe in the com- 
munion of saints. All good men believe that existence is 
not worth much unless it be devoted to some generous 
aims. All are agreed in regard to the qualities that make 
ends generous ; all are persuaded that such ends will never 
be accomplished except by those who keep themselves 
rooted and grounded in truth and love. 

The Radical believes that the world is to be humanized ; 
that the men and women in it are to be made nobler and 
better ; that society is to be regenerated by the action of 
the natural laws of reason and goodness. He believes in 
the highest education of all men and women, in the largest 
possession of rights, the freest sharing of opportunities, 
the most cordial participation in privileges, the richest un- 
folding of powers ; in science, philosophy, literature, art, 



THE RADICAL BELIEF. 43 

industry, commerce, the most liberal communication be- 
tween nation with nation and man with man. He be- 
lieves in developing each and binding all together in 
human bonds ; he believes in the good time coming — the 
kingdom of God — the heavenly Republic — in which edu- 
cated reason and experienced conscience shall be the 
ground of order, peace, and felicity. 



Ill 

THE KADICAL'S EOOT. 

" Rooted and grounded in Love ! " — Ephes. iii. 17. 

EVEKYTHING that lives has a root. The plant draws 
sustenance from two worlds, a world of darkness and a 
world of light, and as ranch from one as the other. Even 
the air plants, as we call them, that seem to live entirely on 
the light and the atmosphere, still derive their nourish- 
ment in part from tangible substances. They pine with- 
out moisture. Would you make them grow in your hot- 
house, you must provide something, though it be nothing 
more than a piece of decaying wood, a lump of charcoal, 
or a few mossy stones, to which they can attach their ten- 
uous roots. So foolish a thing as the rose of Jericho, 
which flourishes all over the East — in the Barbary States, 
in Palestine, and Upper Egypt — lingering by the side of 
streams, enjoying moist places — a plant that in the dry 
season pulls its tiny root out of the ground, curls it tightly 
round its body, and rolls off before the wind until it finds 
a congenial resting-place, nevertheless has its suckers 
which it unwinds and drops down when its pleasure 
serves ; and it always chooses a succulent spot near a 
stream of water, in a bed of mould, or on a heap of .muck. 
The higher the growth upwards, the deeper the root down- 
wards. Plants that live near the ground need but a feeble 
hold on the soil. An inch or two of earth suffices. They 
need not spread at all ; they need only dip. The stem of 



THE RADICAL' 8 BOOT. 45 

the crocus and of the violet is very short ; a child can pull 
them up with its fingers ; they need no depth of soil. But 
the great tree that overshadows half an acre, that takes in 
the sunshine of the whole heavens, and is refreshed by the 
winds that blow from all the quarters of the globe, reaches 
down furlong upon furlong ; its roots are a subterranean 
forest stretching out great branches that twine and grasp 
like anacondas, and appropriate the vitality that ages have 
deposited. The oak-tree, that is to last perhaps a thousand 
years, under whose shade generations of children are to 
play, draws the nurture that sustains it from an area wider 
than it spreads over in the sky ; it lays hold on the very 
heart of the planet, coils about huge rocks beneath the 
earth, ties itself in with the knotted roots of other trees, 
goes plunging and burrowing down towards the centre of 
the globe in search of things that died centuries before, 
and are hastening into mould ; prowls after the hidden 
springs of water, finds where the sweetest fountains are, 
and will even plunge beneath them, pushing its greedy in- 
quiries beyond their ken, levying on other territory that 
may perchance have treasure of food for it. All the force 
of man will not start a mountain pine. The tempest of 
the winter but strips off its leaves ; the earthquake that 
tumbles down the dwellings of a city does not loosen a 
single one of its fibres ; it is an organic thing, a piece of 
nature ; the upper world of light and glory clothes it an- 
nually with the splendor of a new creation; the under 
world, cloudy, dark, and secret, but full of living forces, 
pours into it the products of all the growth of the planet 
for a thousand generations. 

The analogy holds in regard to human beings. Every 
individual man aud woman has a root ; and the grander 
the growth of human qualities the deeper is the root. The 
persons who overlooks his generation you may be sure uu~ 



46 THE RADICALS BOOT. 

derlooks his generation as well. He whose shadow falls 
across centuries draws his sustenance from more centuries 
that have gone before him, and have left no trace save in 
the wealthy world out of which he sprang. According to 
the height of the character is the depth of the source 
whence it draws supplies. Here is a man who is ironed to 
circumstance ; in the upper, superficial stratum of things 
adjacent to him — what we call the conditions of his life — 
the external apparatus by which his existence is kept in 
order, furnish the soil he is grounded in. He depends 
upon those. His fibres strike no deeper than his accidents. 
Is he rich — he blossoms and bears fruit. Is he poor — he 
dries up, shrinks away, perishes. In prosperity he shoots 
up tall, spreads his branches wide, waves his leafage in 
the air ; adversity strikes him, the foliage is all stripped 
off, the branches toss idly in the wind, the trunk sways 
wildly hither and thither, the roots are loosened ; if a se- 
verer gale than usual strikes him, he is laid prone on the 
ground. Is he successful — success feeds him, elates him, 
makes him happy ; his veins are full of sap ; his eye is 
bright ; he hold his head high ; his hand is open. Is he 
unsuccessful — all the geniality is gone ; no more light in 
his eye, no more buoyancy in his step, no more upright- 
ness in his form ; his mind has lost its balance ; his heart 
is dead. Here is a man who, in the season of popularity, 
is open-minded, bright-hearted, happy, warm in his affec- 
tions, generous in his impulses; he seems to be ennobled 
by the regards of his fellow-men. Is he unpopular — the 
withdrawal of the sunlight of common favor, the with- 
holding of the praise of ordinary people, take from him 
the ver}' breath by which he lives, and he blackens and 
dies. To be born at the North was once to be a democrat ; 
to be born at the South was to be an apologist for the pe- 
culiar institution. In England, this man believes in mon- 



THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 47 

archy. In Paris, he praises imperialism or republicanism, 
according to circumstances. In Protestant countries he is 
a Protestant ; in Papal countries, a Papist. In Mecca, he 
puts off his shoes before entering the sacred precincts, and 
kisses the black stone. His faith is that of the country 
he sojourns in ; he worships with the multitude, whatever 
their superstition ; he is as he happens to be ; like the 
chameleon, he takes the color of the ground he lies on, 
some say, of the food he eats ; he is a rose of Jericho, al- 
ways hurrying before the wind, his roots in 'his trunk. If 
he has roots, nobody knows where they are until, occasion- 
ally, for a moment, he finds it convenient to pause and to 
pump up a little sap into his body from the place where 
he happens to find himself. 

Here is a man with a deeper root, a root in his ancestry. 
He is a leaf on a family tree. He refers back to his pre- 
cursors ; is proud of their blood in his veins — the red 
blood, the blue blood, that father, mother, or some more 
distant ancestor, furnishes. This man is mindful of the 
stock he springs from, the pit out of which he was digged. 
He carries himself with a proud consciousness of superior 
worth, if the stock be noble. A kind of nobility charac- 
terizes his look and manner. If it be ignoble, the charac- 
teristics none the less appear in him, and none the less is 
he proud of them ; he boasts of their evil prowess, talks 
haughtily of their wild heroism, exults in their question- 
able achievements, quotes their strong sayings, tries to 
carry himself as their descendant and representative. 
There is a good side to this pride of ancestry, if the ances- 
try be worthy, but there is a bad side to it even then. The 
material that a man derives from his ancestry, however 
rich, does not make him human in the noble sense ; it 
shuts him in with a few qualities ; it makes him reserved, 
exclusive, opinionated, imparts to him the characteristics 



48 THE RADICAL'S BOOT. 

of the caste he belongs to. In fact, the caste spirit itself is 
due to this narrow veneration, for it confines men to cer- 
tain sharply-defined types which clash with each other, 
and cause incessant friction and war. On the whole, root 
of ancestry is a bitter one, and the fruit it bears is 
bitter. 

Let us suppose a man to strike his roots lower down than 
this. He is not, we will say, the creature of his circum- 
stances — he is not the child of his parentage. He belongs 
to his nation ; he is an American or German, Frenchman 
or Englishman. His suckers spread out to the limits of 
the national domain. He is not bounded by State lines. 
He does not ask whether his neighbor comes from the East 
or the West, the North or the South ; he is countryman, 
and that is enough ; he is blood of his blood, and bone of 
his bone, a fellow, an equal, and a brother, sacred in his 
person and venerable in his rights. Such a man will be 
large, expansive, and generous. He is the patriot ; full of 
noble sentiments ; a man of comprehensive sympathies and 
wide interests. He can take his brother American by the 
hand wherever he meets him, be he rich or poor, fortunate 
or unfortunate, attractive or forbidding. The fact of 
belonging to a common country covers a multitude of infir- 
mities. It cannot be denied that a certain grandeur of 
intelligence, a certain faith in ideas, a certain breadth of 
allegiance to principles, accompanies this patriotic type. 
But neither can it be denied that such a person has his lim- 
its. He believes in American ideas, but in no others ; he 
praises American principles, but concedes worth to none 
beside ; you may always know him as a man who exults in 
his native land so cordially that the foreigner is a barba- 
rian. For has he the same feeling to the Englishman? 
Does he equally respect the German ? Has he a profound 
respect for the Frenchman % Can he enter sympathetically 



THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 49 

into the feelings of the Italian or the Irishman ? Not so. 
He is possibly a bigot in his prejudices, unable to appreci- 
ate the intellectual or moral weight of a fellow-man who 
lives on the other side of the Atlantic or the Pacific sea. 
In England he has no eye for what may be the advantages 
of a constitutional monarchy ; in Germany he cannot wel- 
come what may be said for the constitution of the empire ; 
in France he fails to understand the peculiar temper of a 
people that is constantly overturning its own system of gov- 
ernment. He can cherish scorn for the stranger, having 
but one word for stranger and enemy. Noble, wide, 
grand in many respects, his root, nevertheless, is not so 
firm that it cannot be shaken by prejudice, passion, and 
malice. Should the time come when a controversy arises 
between his own government and another, the right is sure 
with him to be on one side ; his motto is, " Our country, 
right or wrong," but still, our country. 

But now, suppose a man to strike down his roots lower 
than this — below family, ancestry, class, clan, tribe, coun- 
try — down into human nature itself ; not asking whether 
one be English, French, German, American, Italian, Irish, 
but whether he be human; suppose a man to really make 
no distinction between Jew and Greek, barbarian or Scy- 
thian, bond or free — to consider simply this one question, 
whether the individual has the attributes of a human 
being. Such a man has real roots. He is interested in 
what concerns his fellows. He strikes down into a prin- 
ciple. He draws sustenance from an idea. His sympa- 
thies are world wide. He touches every person at the 
point where all touch each other. He can surrender him- 
self to a cause. The question with him is, Is it just ? Is 
it right ? This is the noblest, the most exhaustive root of 
all . Deeper than this, deeper than human nature, it is im- 
possible to go. When we see a man striking his roots 

3 



50 THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 

down into this principle of human nature, we see one who 
strikes down into the core of things ; we see one who is 
proof against the severest tribulations, sorrows, tempta- 
tions. JSTo wind can shatter him ; no tempest can unseat 
him ; he stands up under calamity, and even comes out 
stronger from the shock of the elemental war. 

I am to speak this morning of the Radical's Root. 

What do we mean by a Radical ? There are three defi- 
nitions of the term. According to the popular acceptation, 
the Radical is one who pulls up things by the roots, a 
destroyer, a revolutionist. This is the definition of the 
enemy. The genuine Radical rejects it as being no de- 
scription of himself whatever. The Radical says of 
himself, " I come not to destroy, but to fulfil]." He would 
pull up nothing by the roots that had roots to support it. 
He would let even weeds grow in his neighbor's field, if 
the neighbor preferred them to grain ; he has too much 
respect for things that grow, to disturb them without 
cause ; only the poisonous plants that corrupt the atmos- 
phere and impoverish the land, would he eradicate. 

A second definition marks the Radical as one who never 
can rest until he gets at the root of things. The Radical is 
represented as a prying, inquisitive, critical, restless per- 
son, who is forever burrowing in the ground, can never be 
satisfied, can never leave any belief or institution alone, 
can never take a doctrine on trust, must impatiently pull 
up his corn to see how it grows ; a man without intelli- 
gent motive, or earnestness of purpose, or serious desire 
after truth ; inheriting a precious vineyard, which has pro- 
duced luscious grapes for a hundred years, the delicious 
fruit whereof he has tasted in health and sickness, in clus- 
ters and in vintage, since he became a man, he must nev- 
ertheless worry and explore and expose the healthy suck- 
ers of his vines, that he may ascertain in what precise mix- 



THE RADICAL'S BOOT. 51 

ture of soil they are planted ; living in a house which has 
sheltered him and his parents before him, and a line of 
ancestors before them — a house that in generations has 
never started, does not show a crack in its walls or a leak 
in its roof — still he is not content until he has been down 
in the cellar, tested with the hammer every stone in the 
substructure, and carried on geological experiments 
beneath the foundation, at the imminent risk of upsetting 
the building. This, too, I pronounce a caricature. This, 
too, is the definition of the antagonist. The Radical is no 
such person. That there are persons who do this, may be 
true enough, but they are not necessarily Radicals. It is 
not the peculiarity of the Radical, that out of mere curios- 
ity, in a spirit of restlessness, from an idle desire to know 
more than is useful, admissible, or wise, he would unseat 
anything that has a valid claim to permanence. Whatever 
has a solid basis he allows to stand. 

The Radical is simply one who desires a root, who be- 
lieves in roots, is sure that nothing is strong without them, 
and is concerned to know in what sort of soil he is plant- 
ed. He has no fancy for oaks planted in flower-pots ; 
pine-trees set in porcelain vases are not to him beautiful. 
Knowing somewhat the uncertainty of the seasons, having 
had proof of the variableness of climates, he has no wish 
to be put down in a small area, fenced about on all sides, 
bricked closely in so that no draught can freshen the air 
and enliven the soil. He has discovered that in his daily 
life he must face the tempest and brave the blast, and he 
would make sure against being stripped by an autumn 
wind, or sapped by a trickling stream of water, or over- 
turned by a sudden convulsion of nature. He prefers to 
be able to stand, and, when the storm has passed, still to 
stand. He calls himself, therefore, what he is, a Radical 
— a root-man, because he believes in a root ; the deeper 



52 THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 

the root, the more he believes in it ; and his sincere de- 
sire, his only desire, is to know that his root goes down 
deep enough to hold fast amid the severest stress of 
weather. 

The Radical, therefore, cannot be a sectarian. The 
sectarian stands planted in a sect, but a sect is a fragment 
— something cut off from the domain of thought, a small 
ground-plot, or yard, not an open field. The sectarian is 
a class or clique man ; as the word signifies, a man who is 
clipped and trimmed down. He is a tree set in a box, not 
in a meadow. That he has a certain amount of verdure, 
that he bears a certain quality of fruit, that he has ele- 
ments of earnestness, of intensity, may be cheerfully 
granted. Every human being has vitality of some sort ; 
he will grow after a fashion wherever you plant him*; if 
you plant him in a small place, he will make the most of 
his opportunity, he will ripen to the extent of his limits. 
But if the limits are cramped, the stature will be stunted. 
The sectarian is an apple-tree, planted in the cleft of a 
rock. Chance has put it there ; no gardener is responsi- 
ble for the situation ; it makes the best of its handful of 
earth and thimbleful of moisture ; struggles as well as it 
can to get at the light and air; rejoices, after a sickly 
fashion, in the sun ; holds out its scanty leaf to catch the 
rain-fall, but after all can get no more sustenance than the 
conditions allow. The kind wind blows dust into the 
nook where the poor twisted body is ; resolutely the root 
is let down, and painfully the sustenance there is drawn 
up, though it be but a mouthful. But you will see only a 
few wrinkled leaves. On the outermost twig, perhaps, 
you may discover a single apple, which never ripens, and, 
when bitten, proves to be sour. The sectarian has a cer- 
tain amount of force of his own ; but the sound he makes 
as he ripples along, is out of all proportion to the volume 



THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 53 

of the stream; it is the rattle of a thin current of water 
flowing over loose pebbles. A very slender rivulet will 
turn a pretty large mill-wheel if you only make the chan- 
nel narrow enough. But one can have no more life than 
his roots supply ; the sectarian's mind, therefore, is nar- 
row, dry, thin, and sandy. There is no great impulse, no 
eager seeking after the new truth. He holds up his little 
shred of doctrine, and it is not apparent to him that any- 
body else has any doctrine at all. His heart cannot be genial 
or diffusive in its charity. It is impossible for him to feel 
that other men who do not believe as he does, are as good 
as he is ; that they can be sincerely good at all. There is 
a certain amount of conscience, or of conscientiousness, 
rather, but it grinds away at the crank of the denominational 
organization, it turns the creaking wheel of denominational 
duty, and succeeds in bringing out a certain amount of 
hard grits which one can, perhaps, make into a dry biscuit. 
He cannot worship with grandeur of devotion, for his 
deity is a definition, his God is a dogma. He can only 
catch a glimpse of the divine love at the bottom of a well 
as the sun passes over the mouth of it. His soul, there- 
fore, is apt to be arid and barren as his mind ; his love of 
God is love of his denomination, and the love of his de- 
nomination is but a species of the love of himself. 

The Radical cannot be a sectarian. Can the Radical be 
a churchman \ What is a church, but a more comprehen- 
sive and better organized sect, a wider denomination, a 
more diversified group of believers ? There is something 
grand, truly, in the idea of a church ; in every existing 
church there is much that is noble, majestic, and attractive. 
A church is an organization, not a machine ; it is a growth ; 
it lives through ages of time ; it covers a large area of 
space ; it includes people of many conditions, many orders 
of intellect, many casts of disposition, many tongues, many 



54 THE RADICAL'S BOOT. 

types of genius, it may be, many different races. It has 
developed in the course of centuries. There are worlds of 
experiences in it. Its spiritual soil is strong and succu- 
lent, with the joys and sorrows, the thoughts and desires, 
the aspirations and utterances of generations. Its doctrines 
are the product of disciplined minds working through 
many phases of faith. It has sacraments and ceremonies, 
solemn rites, glorious music, beautiful symbols, poetry, 
art, architecture. It has great churches, not meeting-houses, 
that seem to have grown, by the laws of nature, out of the 
soil. To be rooted in a church is to have roots struck into 
historic and holy ground ; it is to draw moisture from 
many living springs ; it is to appropriate the experience, 
perhaps, of a nation. The churchman, so he be a true 
churchman, carries with himself an air of calmness and 
repose, of dignity and of grace. He seems to be a part of 
the institution he belongs to ; a piece of this great organ- 
ism that has lived so long, and comprehended so much, 
and embraced such various life ; something of the spirit of 
antiquity attaches itself to him. He is conservative ; he 
has a great trust, a large reverence, an earnestness in 
thought and feeling that is even impressive and beautiful. 
And yet, the churchman, if he be no more than a church- 
man, is considerably • less than human. What does he 
think of other churches ? Of the Roman Church, for in- 
stance — of the Greek Church ? "What respect has he for 
strange forms of worship ? Does he do more than toler- 
ate extremes that differ from his own ? Does he tolerate 
such as are hostile? The churchman's mind is slow and 
opaque ; his heart is rather self-satisfied than sunny ; his 
conscience rather punctilious than sensitive ; his worship 
is formal ; he prays as the church prays — out of a book. 
He allows the church to think for him, to believe for him, 
to worship for him, to intercede for him. The church 



THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 55 

takes care of him ; pardons his sins ; guarantees his future. 
He treads an ecclesiastical path, passes through an eccle- 
siastical doorway, enters an ecclesiastical heaven. However 
pleasantly he talks with other believers, it is over a fence ; 
however graciously he looks at them, it is with eyes of 
compassion. He cannot help believing that he is in a 
safer place than they. You are impressed by him, as by 
one who feels sure of his past, his present, and also of his 
future, and is good enough to be sorry that his fellow-men 
are not as sure of their destiny as he is of his. The ripe- 
ness of his belief prevents his being angular, but the in- 
terior composure of his mind savors too much of that calm 
exclusiveness which enjoys its spiritual privacy, and keeps 
intruders out of doors. 

The Radical cannot be a churchman. The church is of 
comparatively modern origin, traceable to definite begin- 
nings. It is a production of human wit ; a creation of 
diplomacy. You can easily go below it, and get at the 
secret of it. The Catholic church claims to be older than 
the Bible. Is it older than the Hebrew Bible — to mention 
no others ? The man who strikes his roots into the Old 
Testament, strikes them below the church. The man 
whose roots go down into the soil of these antique Scrip- 
tures penetrates below all Christendom. The Old Testa- 
ment, the old Hebrew Bible — what a world it is ! How 
wonderful in extent, in comprehensiveness ! What wealth 
of antiquity there is in it ! What recesses of wonder 
and marvel it contains ! It covers a continent ; it absorbs 
the life of a race, and one of the most extraordinary races 
that ever lived on the planet. There is in it a universe of 
thought, feeling, conviction, purpose ; the experiences of 
two thousand years are packed away in its chapters. What 
mountain ranges of thought, what sweet valleys of medi- 
tation, what noble rivers of psalmody, what delicious 



56 THE RADICAL'S BOOT. 

fountains and pure rivulets of praise ! What power of 
conviction, what reaches of exaltation, what breadth of 
hope, what vistas of anticipation, what thrilling concep- 
tions of Providence, of the world that is, and of the world 
that is to come ! The man who should sink his roots so 
deeply into the Old Bible that they took np everything 
there, would be a giant among men. But all depends on 
the thoroughness of the exploration. Does one root him- 
self in the letter, or in the spirit ? — that is the question. 
He that roots himself in the letter does not go below the 
surface, hardly pierces the outer crust ; knows nothing, 
» perhaps, of the rich world of experience that is stored in- 
side. ]STow, the Old Testament man as we see him roots 
himself in the letter. The Puritan rooted himself in 
the letter. He knew far less than he might of the 
resources of moral and spiritual sustenance that lay 
hidden in the spirit below the letter. The soil in which 
he struck his root was made up in great measure of the 
debris of the Hebrew mind, wild feelings, fanciful specu- 
lations, strange superstitions and conceits, that are strewn 
broadcast over the surface of the history ; uncouth beliefs 
in Providence, rude conceptions of God and man, gro- 
tesque notions of the constitution of the world, vagaries 
respecting the election of certain races of men, and the 
rejection of others ; and the result of all this was a charac- 
ter of austerity and pride, touched here and there with a 
sweet and rich glow of piety, but having, as the soul of it, 
more reverence for law than truth, for justice than for 
love. The Puritan had a grand life in him, but it was 
rough and severe. He was exclusive, arbitral, and at 
times tyrannical. He carried a rod of iron in his hand ; 
his conscience was a rod of iron. 

Go down below the letter in which the spirit is hidden, 
— sink your roots until you strike the New Testament, and 



THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 57 

you have something infinitely richer. The New Testa- 
ment is the older, because it is the heart, the soul of the 
Old Testament. Was not Jesus a Hebrew, and what 
food did he feed on but that very Bible which we call the 
Bible of the Hebrews ? What was his peculiarity, if not 
this ; that he dropped roots down below the surface of 
the ancestral mind till they touched a secret core of inspi- 
ration in the heart of his race % Everything he had was 
there, every thought, every feeling, every hope, every 
anticipation ; his trust, his faith in the Heavenly Father, 
his conception of the paternal Providence, his sentiments 
of reverence and trust, his patience, his meekness — they 
are all there. But, with the subtile insight that he possess- 
ed, with the exquisite chemistry of his soul, he sent his 
roots underground ; they ran out in every direction until 
they found those sweetest springs of water, and drew the 
sustenance thence that made them bud and blossom. When 
you have penetrated the secret of the Beatitudes, when 
you have got at the soul of the parables, when you have 
searched out the hidden thought in the Sermon on the 
Mount, then, and not before, you have touched the centre 
of power in the old Hebrew Bible. And when, you have 
done that, you have struck into the richest soil that is 
offered to the spiritual nature of the Christian. He that 
will do this will plant himself in the heart of the New 
Testament — not in the letter, not in the strange, crude, 
fantastical portions that are heaped upon its surface ; he 
that, going down below all this — below the errors, the 
mistakes, the superstitions — finds his way into the heart of 
Jesus himself, will blossom and bloom into a life as ex- 
quisitely pure, sweet, and beautiful as is ever seen in 
Christendom. He will have the divinest qualities, and at 
the same time the most human ; he will be able to sub- 
mit himself to the Supreme, and to give himself to his 

Q* 



58 THE BADTCAL'S ROOT. 

brothers. Trust, patience, meekness, reverence — he will 
have them all. Simplicity, purity, charity — all these will 
be his. The Christian Radical roots himself in the heart 
of Jesus; not in his reported word, not in his incidental 
thought, but in the heart of his heart. Beyond that, out- 
side of that, he does not go. He explores none of the 
outlying regions of literature or philosophy. This beauti- 
ful Jewish life is enough for him. 

And yet, is there nothing more ? Is this absolutely 
all ? Is the Hebrew race the only race to be taken into 
account ? Does God give his inspiration to none but those 
who have lived in Palestine ? Did Jesus exhaust human- 
ity ? Do we find everything in the JSTew Testament that 
can be worked into human character \ Other races have 
other gifts ; one, the sentiment of beauty ; another, the 
principle of justice ; another, the passion for liberty ; an- 
other, the devotion to ideal truth in science and philosophy. 
Is it forbidden to make excursions into the outlying litera- 
tures of China or of Greece, of Asia or of Persia, and to draw 
spiritual nourishment from those larger sources, which, 
after all, belong to human nature ? They who can do that 
are the privileged ; they who can do that are the strong. The 
true Radical, the Radical of the Radicals, sinks his shafts 
below sect, church, Bible, Old or New ; below all partial 
experience ; down into the secret places where man has 
stored his treasures of thought, and by all that, tries to live. 

Orthodoxy is right thinking ; but who can claim to 
think rightly? How is one to know that he thinks right- 
ly ? It is very plain that nobody thus far has earned a 
title to monopolize right opinion. To think rightly, is to 
exhaust thought. JSTo one can be truly orthodox as long 
as there is knowledge yet to be acquired. Only the di- 
vine mind is orthodox, because only the divine mind is 
omniscient, and being omniscient, entertains no error, 



THE RADICAL'S BOOT. 59 

Up to this day there is no human orthodoxy. He is most 
orthodox who thinks most closely to facts. 

We speak of new trnth. There is, correctly speaking, 
no new truth. All truth is old as God himself. There 
are new interpretations of truth, new guesses at truth, new 
insights into truth, new readings of truth ; but the Truth 
is more ancient than antiquity; it is as old as the world; 
the last reading only comes nearer the first text. To be 
orthodox, therefore, we need all the knowledge there is 
— of literature, science, art. The Radical accepts the last 
interpretation (so it be a satisfactory one), the last inter- 
pretation of the oldest truth. Those who accept older in- 
terpretations are further off from the original sources than 
he is. The Radical is one who uses the last invented 
plow for his tillage, because it subsoils most thoroughly. 
What he wants is the old, original, primeval truth ; the 
truth that is symbolized in nature, which the Infinite 
mind, in its first perfect operation, embodied in the uni- 
verse. 

The peculiarity of the Radical, let me say finally, the 
test of the Radical's genuineness, is not that he holds a 
certain class of opinions ; it is, that he uses the opinions 
he entertains. It is not his peculiarity to question and 
doubt, to cavil and raise issues ; it is not restlessness of 
mind ; least of all is it flippancy, indifference, looseness or 
lightness of conviction. Let me declare again, he is not a 
destroyer. The true Radical is known not by his restless- 
ness, but by his calmness ; not by his flippancy, but by his 
seriousness ; not by his indifference, but by his earnest- 
ness ; not by the lightness of his speech about the great 
beliefs of mankind, but by the soberness of his speech 
about them. He is known by his patience, his cheerful- 
ness, his serenity, his trust ; the singleness of his purpose, 
the weight of his opinion, his freedom from prejudice, his 



60 THE BADICAL'S BOOT. 

openness to discovery, his thankfulness for light. He is 
one who stands deeply rooted and firmly planted. " He 
stands four square to all the winds that blow." His very 
name implies that he is rooted and grounded. He is rooted 
and grounded — not in prejudice or tradition, not in dog- 
ma or formula, not in sacraments or institutions — he is 
rooted and grounded in love, that even passes knowledge. 



IT. 

THE JOY OF A FKEE FAITH. 

r I iHE theme of this discourse is the joy of a free faith. 
-■- My thoughts have heen turned to this subject by a tone 
of remark both frequent and confident, which reveals a com- 
mon persuasion that a free faith is incapable of producing joy. 
"We hear a good deal about the sadness of the " radicals " 
as they are called, the air of discontent they carry about 
with them, the melancholy cast of their sentiment, the tone 
of uneasiness and pain that runs through their writings, 
the evident depression of their moral state. I do not 
know that any effort is made to prove this by examples ; 
that would not be easy, for as a class the radicals are re- 
markably cheerful. But the fact that no attempt is made 
to prove it, shows how deep the persuasion is. The mel- 
ancholy of the radicals is taken for granted, as a thing that 
needs no proof, that is a thing of course, that could not but 
follow from their beliefs ; men, the assumption is, cannot 
think as they do and not be sad ; their world so dark, 
their God so far off, their Saviour so inaccessible, their 
destiny so clouded : men must be melancholy without the 
sunshine. 

True, they must ; sunshine is the cause of health and 
life, physical and moral. If this common charge were well 
founded it would be fatal. Beliefs that do not beget joy 
in the minds that entertain them are not likely to be true. 
Joy is the test of sanity. Joy is health ; joy is purity ; 
joy is goodness. The joyous man is grateful, innocent, 



62 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 

kind. Human nature like animal nature blackens in the 
gloom. Yice, crime, sin flourish in the shadow. A joy- 
ous world would be a perfect world. This is confessed in 
the anxiety of sects to make it appear that their members 
alone are happy. The Romanist claims a superiority in 
this respect above the Protestant, contrasting the cheerful- 
ness of his religion with the austere tenets of Luther and 
Calvin, his own brightheartedness with the others' painful 
anxieties. The Churchman remarks scornfully on the 
grim disposition of the Puritan. The " Evangelical " 
commiserates the Unitarian, deprived of the celestial so- 
laces and inspirations that come to him through faith in 
the Redeemer. The Unitarian hears an undertone of 
complaint and weariness in the speech of the Rationalists, 
who have cut themselves adrift from the shadowy ark in 
which he fancies himself to be floating. Possibly the Ra- 
tionalist pities those who have reduced the articles of faith 
still lower than he has, and who seem to him to have 
thrown away the last plank that was bearing them towards 
heaven. Even Theodore Parker, heartiest of men, pro- 
fessed a deep compassion for those who did not share his 
faith in the soul's innate assurance of God and immortal- 
ity. " No rainbow beautifies that cloud ; there is thunder 
in it, not light. Night is behind — without a star." This 
feeling, of course, is not rational ; it is born of prejudice, 
not of observation. There are sad people in all faiths, 
and there are joyous people in all faiths ; both the joyous- 
ness and the sadness proceed perhaps from temperament, 
and would exist under any forms of belief. The springs 
of sadness and of gladness are within, deep down, and 
often hidden, their connection with modes of opinion being 
concealed entirely. The physicist says that the brightest 
light as a rule proceeds from the blackest substances ; so 
the most radiant happiness may have its sources, for 



THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 63 

aught we know, in pools of sentiment that to the ordinary 
eye look stygian in blackness. 

It is not fair to argue from special instances. The poet 
Cowper was a faithful believer in the evangelical scheme 
of salvation, and yet was a most unhappy man, his joy- 
lessness being a cause of anxiety to his friends, and of 
torment to himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the foremost 
man among American free believers, is one of the most 
felicitous spirits alive ; he lives in the atmosphere of 
serene ideas, joyous and a perpetual cause of joy. The 
explanation of the two cases is to be found in the the tem- 
perament of the two persons ; that of Cowper was morbid and 
low, with a streak of insanity running through it ; that of 
Emerson is clear and bright, with a natural healthf ulness in 
it that sheds abroad an aroma as from pine trees or newly 
mown hay. The temperament of Cowper would have 
taken the sunshine out of the most radiant of faiths ; the 
temperament of Emerson would make flowers bloom from 
the most wintry ground. 

The moral effects of religious beliefs can be judged only 
from an observation of wide spaces and of continuous 
years. Generations must be born in them, and must drink 
them in with the mother's milk. They must form the 
minds of children, and of child rens' children, being ac- 
cepted without question, applied without misgiving, 
expressed in literature, voiced in song, condensed into 
practical maxims of duty, mixed with the substance of 
domestic feeling, incorporated with habitual states of mind. 
"When thus lived on and worked over, faiths modify tem- 
perament, shape it, induce it. A religion will create its 
own type of sentiment, as climate creates its own type of 
animal and plant. All beliefs have their fresh, creative 
period, and by this they must be judged. When that 
period is passed, the virtue goes out of them ; they create 



4 

64 TEE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 

no more ; they tend then to uncreate, to disorganize. The 
relation of the living mind to them being disturbed, there 
is no more wholesome reciprocity of action, no cordial un- 
derstanding, no consent of feeling, disposition, or purpose. 
The reason criticizes, the heart rebels, the conscience 
doubts and questions, the soul wavers. The faith shows 
no longer its happy aspect: the reverse side alone 
appears. 

This is the position of the " Evangelical " system in our 
generation. The ages when people cordially believed it 
are gone by; the ages when they can be sure of extract- 
ing joy from it are rapidly going. Looking over, the other 
day, the correspondence of Theodore Parker, I was 
struck by the number of letters addressed to him that 
expressed gratitude for deliverance from agonies of soul 
that were produced by the "Evangelical" theology. They 
were full of groans, some of them bleeding in every line. 
My own correspondents tell the same story of distress. 
People of every shade of theological opinion, from Cal- 
vinism to Unitarianism, describe themselves as awaking 
from a dream-haunted sleep, and are as thankful for what 
is called infidelity, as the victim of nightmare is for the 
dawn. People I meet among my own acquaintance who 
are at times brought to the verge of insanity by horrid 
visions proceeding from their impressions of the ordinary 
faith of Christendom : they cannot banish them ; they 
cannot forget them ; they cannot reason them away ; their 
minds cannot clear themselves of the dogmatical rubbish 
that clogs all the highways and byways of thought. The 
people are becoming fewer and ever fewer in number to 
whom the common faith of Christendom brings joy. 
There are such, no doubt, both old and young : we may be 
sure there are ; but it is a question whether the joy is as 
intense or as long-lived as it was in the palmy days of the 



THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 65 

faith. The genius of the system is on the wane ; its cre- 
ative force is spent ; and the ecstacy that accompanied the 
fresh experience of its truth is sensibly diminished. The 
rapture of conversion is often followed by disappointment 
and dejection. The height, if reached, is held but for a 
moment, then comes a reaction, sometimes into terrible 
apathy and gloom. 

Every faith is joyous in its triumphant days ; every 
faith has its triumphant days, when it is creative, when it 
stands for light and liberty, when it promises and confers 
emancipation. What heavens Romanism during the 
" dark ages " opened to unenlightened masses of mankind 
in the ancient European world ! What liberation from 
the bondage of the animal nature, from the despotism of 
institutions, from the crushing dullness of ignorance, stu- 
pidity, monotony, vice, violence! The portal of the 
church must have seemed literally the gate to paradise. 
The cathedral was a place of enchantment; the music and 
incense, the pictured madonna, the carved Christ, the 
emblem of godhead, the symbol of eternity, the chapel, 
the altar, the lamp of silver and gold, the marble floor, 
the stone ceiling, the clustered pillars reaching into the 
shadow, the silent priests in their gorgeous robes, the 
chanting boys, the mystery of the mass, the crowds of 
angels, the space filled with fancies of celestial beings, the 
brotherhood of believers^ the communion of saints, the 
endless vistas into the world to come, charmed and trans- 
ported the mind. It all meant to the worshipper, free- 
dom ; freedom from doubt and fear, freedom from pain 
and sorrow. It gave room for faith to soar, for hope to 
sing, for thought to wander. The oppression that we 
discover in the system was unf elt ; the yoke was easy ; the 
burden was light ; the glory alone was visible. 

In Luther's day the approaching change was felt. The 



66 TEE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 

heart of the early Protestant swelled with joy at the 
thought that the spell was broken. He was free from 
popery and prelacy, from mass and mummery, from priest- 
craft and ritualism. He could read the Bible with open 
eyes ; he could pray out of his own heart ; he could ap- 
proach his Saviour face to face ; he could trust his soul. 
His emancipated spirit revelled in the delight of unre- 
stricted faith and adoration. He was a bird loosed from a 
cage. He was a prisoner released from his dungeon. All 
he saw was the gladdening light ; all he felt was the genial 
temperature of the day. 

To the early Puritan his faith brought joy, deep and 
serene. To him the austere features did not present them- 
selves. From him the terrible side that is turned towards 
us, was hidden. The sweetness alone he knew. He had 
vistas and openings where to us are only closed doors. 
Believing himself conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity, 
a child of wrath by nature, it was unspeakable ecstacy for 
him to be told that a way was prepared by which he could 
pass out of his prison-house into the open sunlight of 
God's favor. Conscious of his own inability to escape 
from the wrath his nature deserved, could he be grateful 
enough for the Redeemer who suffered the pains of per- 
dition in his stead, and made it possible for him to 
mount to heavenly places by means of a simple act of 
faith, which consisted in disavowing the private merit he 
never possessed, and in loving the greatest of benefactors ? 
The Christ was an awful judge : but first of all he was a 
gracious Saviour, and he judged none but those he had 
done his utmost to save ; only they who refused his pity 
incurred his wrath. Was the vicarious atonement an 
affront to reason % He viewed it as a divine mystery be- 
fore which he bent in humble awe. The everlasting tor- 
ments of the damned were awful to contemplate ; but the 



THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 67 

Redeemer came to rescue mankind from them. In that 
entrancing belief all painful contemplations were swallow- 
ed up. The earnest Puritan could not dwell on thoughts 
of hell, he saw only heaven. The reflection which tortures 
us is, that the privilege is not extended to all ; that the 
divine grace is restricted to a few. " Many are called, 
but few chosen," says the Holy Book, and the few are 
foreordained to that felicity from the beginning of the 
world. But faith saw a way of escape out of this dilem- 
ma ; faith saw only the way of escape ; the dilemma did 
not exist for it. All are chosen who choose to be. Are 
they few ? That is because few respond to the call. The 
few might be many, and any individual of the many may 
be entitled to count himself among the few. It is ground 
of general rejoicing that the grace is offered to all ; it is 
ground of special congratulation that each may have the 
consciousness of being numbered among -the " elect." 
Thus the faith, in any particular case, meant emancipa- 
tion, and emancipation meant delight. 

But the Unitarian has lost the key. He sees only the 
naked, repulsive dogma, and wonders that human creatures 
are, or ever were, able to live under it. He rejoices in 
having cast the burden of fear off. He exults in the idea 
that he has liberated himself from a cruel bondage, coarse, 
pitiless, terrifying, the bondage of an iron creed, every 
article of which was a dogma offensive to reason and hate- 
ful to the heart. 

Careful reflection makes this evident : that every faith 
brings joy to the devout believers who interpret it from 
the inside, that no faith brings joy to the unbelievers who 
criticize it from the outside. Every faith is a joyous one 
in its living period, no faith is joyous in its period of de- 
cline. And this besides is evident, that freedom and joy 
are closely associated, that freedom indeed is joy. The 



68 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 

freest faith gives most joy. To this conclusion we are 
brought at length. Let a faith be free, truly free, let it 
be considered in the light of its freedom, let the element 
of freedom in it be recognized and felt, and joy will of 
necessity result, as exhilaration results from a pure atmos- 
phere, as the sweet summer morning bestows sensations 
of pleasure. If the rational faith be the freest of all, it 
must be the most joyous of all. Is it the freest of all % I 
claim that it is. 

It is freer than any other from superstition, and that is 
the soul of all freedom, as superstition is the soul of all 
bondage. Romanism delivered men from the grosser su- 
perstitions of heathenism. Protestantism delivered men 
from the grosser superstitions of Romanism. The Uni- 
tarian movement delivered men from the grosser super- 
stitions of Protestantism. But Rational faith aims at de- 
livering men from all superstition, whatever its name ; 
the superstition of the Church, the superstition of the 
Bible, the superstition of the dogma, the superstition of 
the sect, party, organization, order ; the superstition of the 
Romanist, who ascribes supernatural powers to an institu- 
tion ; of the Lutheran and Calvinist, who ascribe super- 
natural powers to a book ; of the Unitarian, who thinks it 
a matter of vital moment that people should hold to a 
faint reminiscence of all these. 

The Rational believer is happy only when the last frag- 
ment of superstition disappears from his mind, and he is 
free to walk abroad wherever intelligence leads him. In 
proportion as one is able to do this, is he joyous. 

Superstition is reliance for special aid on supernatural 
powers ; it is a sense of dependence on the will of such 
powers. They may be gods or demi-gods, demons, spirits, 
angels, imps, beings physical or metaphysical, evil or good, 
powers of the air, or of the earth ; the principle working 



THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 69 

through them all is the same. The superstitious man is 
one who imagines that his health and wealth depend, not 
on his conformity with natural laws and conditions, but 
on the observance of certain portents or signs on which 
the favor of the besetting demon hangs. It is doubtful 
whether any living person is totally, at all moments and 
in all moods, free from superstition ; it can hardly be 
doubted that the moments when he is free are the happiest. 
It is a curious fact that superstition is commonly char- 
acterized as dark. Whenever it is recognized it is re- 
cognized as dark — all superstitions are confessedly dark 
except our own — and these last we do not acknowledge. 
And superstition is dark ; always dark. Such a thing as a 
bright and beautiful superstition, such a thing as an inno- 
cent superstitution, does not, exactly speaking, exist. The 
fairy fictions of the nursery are not necessarily super- 
stition. They may be fanciful, and poetic, and nothing 
more. The child is fond of reading about the fairies, but 
rarely expects aught from them. If he does, no happiness 
ever ensues. Be the superintending power ever so kind, 
be the providence ever so gracious, be the watching spirits 
ever so loving, the feeling that something must be done to 
keep the guardian genius in good humor lest evil befal, 
disables the will and causes anxiety to the heart. Some- 
thing has been done or left undone, which may put im- 
portant interests in jeopardy ; one can never be quite cer- 
tain that the gracious powers have been duly propitiated. 
If one feels that he has not prayed often enough or aright, 
that he has neglected the observance of a day or the use of 
a ceremony, that he has fallen short in some point of doc- 
trine, or been careless in the performance of a stated duty, 
and has thus made himself liable to disaster, however slight 
the matter may be, however incidental, a shadow falls on 
the spirit. 



70 THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH 

There is no serenity except in a sweet strong confidence 
in the natural integrity of the universe, in the prevalence 
everywhere of cause and effect, in the tender immutabil- 
ity of law. He alone is happy who believes that nothing 
happens ; that whatever comes, comes through cause and 
effect, rationally. He alone is joyous who feels glad that 
it is so, who answers the encompassing forces with meek 
obedience, asking nothing better than their ordinances ap- 
point. To feel that all is well, though no gift is brought 
to the unseen, and no propitiation offered — to feel safe, 
though at home in church time, or in the fields on the 
Sabbath — to feel safe though the Bible be unread, the 
communion table unapproached, the creed unrecited, all 
pious conventionalities disregarded — to feel safe on all days 
and in all places alike — to be able to read all books, study 
all knowledge, converse with all persons, entertain all' 
thoughts — to have no misgivings lest the well-meaning mind 
be pounced upon unawares from behind some stick or stone 
— to feel quite at home in what thoughtless people call the 
outer darkness of unbelief, by whatever ugly name known 
— to live as in a friendly universe, cheerily, hopefully, 
knowing that if we ascend up into heaven there is good- 
ness, that if we make our bed in the underworld there is 
goodness still, that if we take the wings of the morning 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, the same 
goodness leads and supports — this is to be full of joy. 
And in this way the rational man lives, fitting himself as 
well as he can into the conditions of the world he is a 
part of, and trusting the well-knit constitution of things. 
Should he not therefore be joyous who is a perfect free- 
man ? 

The anxiety of certain liberal people, lest they should 
not have found the whole truth, lest in some point they 
should misbelieve, betrays the spirit of superstition in a 



THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 71 

form perilous through attenuated. The impression that 
souls are in danger of some calamity in this world or the 
next unless they have in possession the talisman of a 
correct faith ; the impression that mistaken opinions in 
regard to the secret of the universe expose people to ma- 
lignant influences from some adversary who lurks in error, 
is one of those subtle illusions which will destroy the 
peace of even noble minds. How can we avoid mistaken 
opinions? How can we obtain certainly true ones? 
What right has any body to think that there are beliefs 
in which people are necessarily unhappy or unsafe? 
What right has any body to intimate that his neighbor is 
on the way to that wilderness where lions are waiting to 
devour, and no springs are gushing from the ground ? We 
shall not have got rid of superstition till we have got rid 
of a sorry notion like that, and have become fairly foot- 
loose in the realm of mind, not as nomads or roving 
Bedouins who have no abiding-place, but as citizens of the 
intellectual world, who are always at home with the spirit- 
ual laws. The joy of having this freedom of the universe 
is something that cannot be described to one that has never 
experienced it. To have the night as bright as the day, 
no terrors in the dark, is a privilege which none but the 
most emancipated minds know, but it is a privilege which 
the rational faith would gladly bestow on all men. 

For this faith releases us completely from the bondage 
of fear. It does not comprehend fear. What is there to 
be afraid of, except fear itself ? The great fear is the fear 
of death. What a feature that has been in religion ! 
And religion, that should have taken it away, has intensi- 
fied it. The natural terror of death is not great. The 
artificial terror of it is immense. Death is the point upon 
which the older forms of faith accumulate terrors. Con- 
sider the part that death plays in the drama of redemp- 



Y2 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 

tion. What gloomy pageantry the Church of Rome 
associates with it ! What frightful issues Protestantism 
hangs on its fluttering moments ! This most natural ar- 
rangement of providence has been seized on by preacher 
and priest, and worked up into a grotesque importance 
that completely conceals its original character. The ap- 
proaches of death are lined with awe and draped with 
mystery ; the circumstances of death are exaggerated into 
a ghastly importance ; the hour of death is watched with 
painful solicitude : the bearing in death is commented on 
fearfully. By the bedside stands the priest with chalice 
and book, prayer and holy water. The ceremonies pre- 
pared for the last hour are made to convey the feeling 
that the great crisis of existence has come, and that the 
departing soul has struck into the path of its final doom. 
The old religion did what it could and does what it can to 
deepen the solemnity and magnify the issues of death. 
If there were no death the whole system would give way ; 
the church would lose the very ground of its existence ; 
the curtain would fall on the drama of redemption ; the 
whole machinery of salvation would be consigned to the 
lumber room. Of the people that make death the subject 
of much thought, the Spiritualists alone take the happy 
view of it which characterized the earliest Christians, 
especially the disciples of Paul, who regarded death as a 
process of transfiguration. The so-called " liberal "sects of 
Christendom dwell still under the shadow, more or less 
dense, of the ancient fear. The incidents of death are 
still in keeping of theology, by which it is regarded as a 
supernatural, not as a natural fact, and the efforts of 
divines to keep it within the circle of those associations 
are incessant. 

The rational faith restores death to its legitimate place 
among the phenomena of nature, and by so doing emanci- 



THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 73 

pates mankind from a crushing fear ; it rolls a heavy bur- 
den from the mind, reclaims from the dominion of gloom 
large tracts of experience, lets in light on sickness, old 
age, the weakening and decay of faculty, the departure of 
friends, the chamber of decline, the last bed, removes the 
hideous spectre from the edge of the grave. Questions 
respecting the hereafter it leaves open to science and phil- 
osophy, taking them from the exclusive possession of priests 
and preachers. It bids theology be silent, and reason 
speak. The sense of relief is unspeakable. Existence 
recovers its fair proportions. The activities of life come 
into play. Industry takes courage, affection blooms, pri- 
vilege invites, and pleasure smiles. The awful anticipation 
is put out of sight, or contemplated with calmness. Life 
is free to use up to life's last hour, and the end is thought 
of only when it comes. 

But no words of description, no words specifying ad- 
vantages gained, do the least justice to the happy emotions 
of this great victory. The joy brims over ; the heart is 
renewed ; poetry and song express the fresh delight ; the 
faces of men and women declare it in their radiant looks ; 
family affection feels it ; flowers take the place of the 
shroud ; the coffin is a casket ; a thousand signs indicate 
the bright change that has come over the moral world. 

How can people thus emancipated from fear be charged 
with gloom % Where do they whb bring the charge find 
their justification ? In their own fears. The rational be- 
lievers, " red republicans " of religion as they have been 
called, are supposed to be in danger from their own free- 
dom in a world infested by wild beasts. But what if they 
see in freedom the only chance of escaping from the beasts ? 
What if the creatures suspected of being wild beasts turn 
. out to be not wild beasts at all, but useful domestic ani- 
mals. 

4 



74 THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 

The rationalists, it is said, still, as of old, are without 
God in the world. If the allegation were that they had 
too much God in the world it would be more intelligible, 
for this assertion more nearly states the facts in the case. 
Without God in the world ! Can we be in God's world, 
without God ? They only make the accusation who be- 
lieve that through and through this is not God's world, that 
vast tracts of the universe are unreclaimed by deity, that 
God has here and there a stronghold where his children 
may be safe from robbers; a fortress in Jerusalem, another 
in Home, another in Constantinople, another in Westmin- 
ster, another in Cambridge ; a castle called " Church," a 
castle called " Scripture," a castle called "Articles;" each 
a walled city, large enough to contain many thousands of 
souls, but to which the souls must resort from the outer 
regions of science, philosophy, literature, and art. To those 
who believe this in any sense, it must seem a sad thing to 
be wandering at large over the face of the earth, in exile 
of course, in danger and destitution equally of course. 

Theology insists on the minimum of God. It would 
limit him to times and seasons ; it would confine him to 
points of space, assign to him particular spots on the earth's 
surface, and forbid his going forth in the world at large. 
But suppose we substitute for the minimum of God the 
maximum ; suppose, instead of speaking of God as some- 
where, we speak of him as everywhere ; what then ? Must 
not the joy of his presence be diffused % If we take his 
spirit from the Bible, and spread it over the human mind ; 
if we take his life from Palestine and distribute it over 
Europe, England, America ; if we destroy the theologian's 
monopoly of him, and allow the chemist, the naturalist, 
the economist, the inventor, the artizan, the industrial 
worker to have their share ; if we break up the exclusive 
proprietorship of the Church, and let civilization enjoy a 



THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 75 

portion of the advantage that his presence confers ; if we 
dismantle the fortresses of revelation and quarter the ar- 
mies of the living God about in the homes of mankind, 
must we not by so doing impart to the many the gladness 
that was appropriated by the few ? 

It is the peculiarity of the free faith that it cannot be 
without God in the world, for it identifies God with order, 
harmony, and beauty, and these are everywhere, in the 
world of matter and the world of mind. To perceive this 
only by glimpses is ecstacy ; to have the thought always 
before one is a perpetual enchantment. The devout be- 
liever in the living operations of law, if there be such a 
man, must be as joyous as the lot of mortals permits. It 
he be free from bodily ailment, from the pinch of hunger, 
from the sting of cold ; if his physical and mental powers 
be unimpaired, existence to him cannot be other than a 
delight. With the conditions I have mentioned he must 
be free from sorrow. His mind cannot suffer from doubt ; 
he is above fear ; he is sure that what befals in the order of 
providence is well. The link that binds causes and effects 
together is of pure shining gold. He is unhappy only 
when, through some infirmity of passion or purpose, he 
has been unfaithful to the perfect order to which he be- 
longs, and in which he is called to take a rational part. 
His hours of dejection are those in which he is conscious 
of being out of harmony with nature ; when the harmony 
is restored by activity, affection, or kindness, it is not in 
the power of mortal man to disturb his happy calm. His 
sense of intimacy with the Supreme is unbroken. 

I know I am describing something which is far, very 
far indeed, beyond the range of ordinary experience ; but 
I know that the rational faith tends to bring the experi- 
ence within reach of every man and woman. There 
are those of my acquaintance who share it. Of course, 



76 THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 

outside of my acquaintance there are multitudes who know 
what it is. As a rule, Radicals are joyous people, joy- 
ous, not as children are who live in sensation, but as in- 
telligences are which live in faith. Their joy is unalloyed 
by misgivings in regard to themselves, and by apprehen- 
sions in regard to their neighbors. They are optimists so 
far as the constitution of nature is concerned. To them 
the world they live in is the best world possible. Said 
Theodore Parker in his last sickness : u If not hilarious as 
when well, I am never sad. In all my illness, and it is 
now in its third year, I have not had a single sad hour. I 
have such absolute confidence in the Infinite Love which 
creates and provides for the world, and each individual in 
it, that I am sure death is always a blessing, a step 
forward and upward, to the person who dies." That word 
is from the heart of the great prophet of free faith in 
America. 

When that faith shall have had time to mature, when it 
shall have taken possession of the popular mind, so as to 
be quietly domesticated there, when it shall have tried its 
efficacy in the department of domestic nurture, when two 
or three generations of children shall have been reared in 
it, when it shall have infused a soul into literature, written 
songs, poems, nursery rhymes, hymns for church and 
home, its full power as a ministration of joy will be re- 
vealed. Then a change will take place in all the habitual 
feelings of men. New emotions will be excited by the 
incidents of life. Temperaments will be modified in ac- 
cordance with the mind's new attitude towards the encom- 
passing world. The ancient gloom will be dispelled. The 
creature will look into the Creator's face with a smile. 



V. 
LIVING FAITH. 

AMONG- the many criticisms that are made on the 
Radical Belief, there is one that seems to give a 
more hearty satisfaction to the critics than any other, be- 
cause it touches the most vital part of the matter. The 
criticism is that the faith is not a living one. Intellectual 
it may be, brilliant, fascinating, plausible, but it possesses 
no power of communicating life either to those that hold 
it or to those whom they wish to convince. This is the 
charge. 

This defect is ascribed to various causes. Some say the 
Radical Belief is but a heap of denials, and no faith can 
live on denials. It has no Trinity, no Incarnation, no 
Redeemer, no Vicarious Atonement, no Day of Judgment, 
no Perdition, no Salvation for believers ; it has no mirac- 
ulous history, no heaven-sent apostles, no inspired book, 
no infallible church, no immutable creed, no special reve- 
lations, no saving sacraments, no priesthood or prophecy ; 
how then can it be living ? What has it to live on % 
What has it to live for ? 

Others, who accept the denials of the new faith, and 
welcome them, to whom its negative aspect is incidental 
to its positive, who are in full sympathy with its ideas of 
God, Christ, Christianity, the world present and the world 
to come, who see in it the only rational faith, complain, 
on their part, of the same thing their adversaries exult in, 
namely : that the faith, though it ought to be a living one, 



f 8 LIVING FAITE. 

is not. It does not strike root, it does not spread, its 
boughs are not laden with fruit, it is smitten with the 
plague of barrenness. 

I. That ours is not a living faith is supposed to be 
proved by its apparent inability to form and establish 
churches. Every other sect builds costly houses of wor- 
ship and crowds them with people. Catholicism goes on 
erecting cathedrals ; Protestantism multiplies chapels, or- 
ganizes religious associations, ordains preachers and pas- 
tors. Even Unitarianism Has its edifices and its clergy. 
What institutions of this sort can the Radicals show ? 
Their organizations are soon disorganized, their societies, 
wanting principles of cohesion, fall to pieces and dissolve. 
The perpetuity of their churches, which are not churches 
in any true sense, but congregations, audiences, occasional 
assemblages, depends on the power of some individual 
orator to collect about him people enough to afford him 
support, and to hold them by the spell of his eloquence so 
long as his popularity lasts ; while he lives, perhaps, the 
society flourishes and looks like an institution. But if he 
dies, or is taken sick, or loses his voice, or for any reason 
leaves his place, the association breaks up and the building 
passes into other hands. The faith cannot get itself 
planted and instituted; so its foes vociferate — so its friends 
deplore. 

To this proof of lifelessness which has so convincing a 
look, the Radical serenely replies that, admitting the facts 
mentioned, he is not in the least disturbed by them. He 
does not want churches. He does not desire permanent 
organizations, or closely compacted societies that can live 
on mechanically, driven by sheer force of momentum, long 
after the impelling power is withdrawn. These boasted 
religious institutions show that faith was alive once, not 
that it is alive now. The object of the new faith is to 



LIVING FAITH. 79 

form associations, however temporary and limited, on the 
ground of intellectual and spiritual affinities ; to make as 
many centres of fine influence as possible, each to last till 
its vitality is spent, and no longer. If these centres did 
not exist, if no sparkling points appeared, no magnetic 
attractions, no crystallizing processes, then indeed the 
faith would be lifeless. But so long as these are extant 
and visible to all men, the faith is doing its characteristic 
work. The fact that societies vanish is of no significance. 
The significant fact is that they again and again reappear. 

II. But the new faith has no Dogma, it is urged again, 
and dogma is the foundation of everything. Dogma is 
the intellectual substance of every faith. -To define the 
dogma and defend it, to expound and propagate it, is the 
business of the church. This gives the believers their ob- 
ject. But the principle of the Rationalist faith is not vital 
enough to build a dogma. It has, consequently, no or- 
gans devoted to the dissemination of its views ; no daily 
paper, no weekly journal, no monthly magazine. It has 
attempted these things and failed. Its chief monthly pe- 
riodical goes out of existence after a short and eventful 
career. A predecessor sustained a precarious position for 
barely a twelvemonth ; it is a question how long the ve- 
hicles now running will continue to move. The faith 
lacks intellectual no less than organizing faculty. It is" 
deficient in live mind. Having no system of definite 
thoughts, no coherent formulas of doctrine, it, of course, 
possesses no electrifying power. 

To this statement, which looks grave, the imperturbable 
Radical quietly makes answer to this effect : that Dogmat- 
ism being his chief enemy, he would simply stultify him- 
self by trying to rally people about a dogma. His business 
is the overthrow of the dogmatic spirit, the abolition of the 
creed quality, the destruction of those " organs " of faith 



80 LIVING FAITH. 

which revive prejudice and bigotry. He would give faith 
a natural expression, and let it find its natural channels. 
If it will not flow in one avenue it will in another. If it 
collects in pools, lakes, reservoirs, well ; equally well if it 
flows in rivulets. "No " organ " can voice it all, or any of 
it for a long time, or for a great multitude of people, and 
when one has ceased speaking acceptably it deceases. That 
our papers and magazines flourish briefly and disappear, is 
a sign that the living water of this dispensation finds flow- 
ing streams more congenial than standing pools. 

III. Let this pass, then. A more fatal charge lies 
against the new faith, and that of a character less easily 
met. Professing to be progressive and humane, to pray 
for a kingdom of God in this world, to expect a regenerated 
social condition instead of a future heaven, it distinguishes 
itself by no efforts to make real its glorious visions of hu- 
manity. It inaugurates no great movements of philan- 
thropy ; it institutes no original reform ; it sets on foot no 
crusade against monstrous vices, crimes, and iniquities ; it 
takes the lead in no fresh assaults against the old foes 
Christianity has been combating for centuries. Where are 
its grand institutions of beneficence % Where are the evi- 
dences of its interest in the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the 
abandoned, the disfranchised % Where are its brother- 
hoods of self-sacrificing souls % Where are its sisterhoods 
of mercy ? Where are its hospitals, its asylums, its houses 
of refuge, its orphans' homes, its retreats for the old, the 
disabled, the helpless \ The charities of Romanism are 
known and esteemed of all men. Protestant beneficence 
gives demonstration of power. The Radical does nothing. 
He boasts of his humanity, and leaves the humanities to 
his neighbors. He talks hourly of his interest in social 
questions, and resigns to his orthodox friend the duty of 
solving them. 



LIVING FAITH. 81 

I will not urge the usual considerations by which this 
accusation is met. I will not cite the examples of eminent 
beneficence displayed by Radicals ; the generosity of this 
one to the poor ; the munificence of that one to the work- 
ing classes ; the devotion of this man's fortune to the cause 
of popular education, of that one's to the work of aiding 
homeless women. All these things are done under the 
inspiration of the old ideas, and have nothing characteris- 
tic in design or method. Nor will I do more than allude 
to the circumstance that among the most advanced and 
earnest leaders in every grand movement of reform, 
whether social, financial, commercial, political, or moral, 
the believers in the new faith will be found toiling and 
devoting themselves. Statements of this kind do not fair- 
ly meet the objection. For these grand movements in 
humanity — the agitation against war, for example, against 
intemperance, against licentiousness, against the gambling- 
hell, against cruelty in prisons and barbarism in legis- 
lation — were initiated by men of the.pld faith. The Radi- 
cals found them at work and worked with them. They 
may have worked with a different interest, under a fresh 
motive, in an original spirit ; but the work was old work, 
and little has been done to impart to it anew soul, or 
supply to it new facilities. 

Let the truth of the charge be admitted ; the new faith 
cannot compete with the old in what are commonly called 
" benevolent enterprises." It would not, probably, if it 
were as rich and capable as the old faith is. Not because 
the Radicals are stingy, as has been over and over again 
asserted ; but because they cannot accept the principle on 
which those enterprises are conducted, and no other prin- 
ciple is yet in working order. No original work is as yet 
possible. In the old-fashioned, conventional modes of 

charity, the new faith has no confidence. It perceives that 

4* 



82 LIVING FAITH. 

they are not rational ; it knows that they are not scientific ; 
it strongly suspects that they are not reformatory or regen- 
erating ; it is more than half persuaded that they bring 
serious mischiefs and even permanent evils in their train ; 
its very love of humanity forbids its enlisting itself enthu- 
siastically with their supporters. 

At any rate, this species of humane labor is sufficiently 
w T ell attended to. Both Catholic and Protestant Christen- 
dom engage in it with due emulation. There is no dearth 
of the hospitality which takes from people the responsi- 
bility of caring for their sick. There are enough of orphan 
asylums which snatch children awaj^ from the toils and 
temptations incident to their exposed condition, to make 
them nuns or monks, or some other quite useless and hope- 
less thing. There is good supply of " Refuges " and 
" Homes," that gather in and sink into oblivion many a 
man and woman and child who should be a help to society 
and not a burden. Of alms-giving there is a thousand 
times more than enough, and of pious attempts to draw 
people into the church by holding before them a soup 
tureen. 

Vast sums of money are given to such charities. Yery 
little of it, probably, is bestowed out of a free heart, from 
pure love of humanity, with the single desire to improve 
the social condition of fellow-men, or to diminish mortal 
suffering. A great deal of it, no doubt, is bestowed in the 
hope of future recompense. The motto of Protestant 
charity is : " He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the 
Lord." The gift is an investment on the very best secu- 
rity. It is a price paid for salvation. It secures a pas- 
sage to the heavenly courts and a favored place there. The 
Catholic church obtained its wealth, in a large measure, 
from persons who wished to secure the safety of their own 
souls or the souls of their kindred. The Protestant 



LIVING FAITH. 83 

churches obtain the wealth thejr spend in beneficence by 
appealing to the love of souls and to the hope of Heaven. 
How much of the money would be given were this selfish 
motive taken away, it would be idle to conjecture ; proba- 
bly a very small proportion of it. To say that disinterested 
beneficence is rare, is to state the case feebly. The benefi- 
cence that is satisfied with ordinary dividends, with aver- 
age returns, with simple interest, is rare. It is the prom- 
ise of the celestial compound interest that draws the 
subscriptions to the evangelical stock. This promise the 
Radical does not consider himself favored with. What he 
gives he gives from moral conviction or personal feeling, 
from genuine interest or from genuine principle. It is 
not an investment, but a contribution ; not a treasure laid 
up in Heaven, but a treasure distributed on Earth. 

The old methods of charity, discountenanced by reason- 
able men, discredited by practical men, denounced by sci- 
entific men, are wearing out. But new methods of charity 
— reasonable, scientific, practical — have not yet been de- 
vised. When they are devised we shall see the new faith 
taking hold, and the old faith dropping off. The new 
faith will exhibit its charity when it shall find an object 
that makes to it commanding appeal. 

We are brought, then, at once to the question : What 
is it that constitutes a Living Faith? It is not its theology, 
its christology, its eschatology, ontology, or pneumatology; 
it is not the cast of its speculative thought. The Trinita- 
rian hypothesis is no more vital than the Unitarian. The 
dogma of Christ's divinity is no more vitalizing than the 
doctrine of his humanity. There is no more quickening 
power in the idea of God's wrath than in the idea of his 
love. The most imposing faiths are sometimes the dead- 
est. The most unpretending are sometimes the most 
alive. 



84: LIVING FAITH. 

I could tell you the name of a man whose " faith " is 
so exceeding small that, with the majority of Christians, 
he passes as a man of no faith whatever. For he riot only 
rejects Christianity under every existing form, and has 
something approaching to antipathy toward its dogmas and 
institutions, its usages and its officials ; but he will not 
call himself a believer in God or in Immortality. He is 
not so much as a Deist, but is what is commonly termed 
an Atheist. Yet the vitality of this man's — I will not say 
spiritual, I will say human — life is wonderful, far sur- 
passing the average measure in those who share every re- 
ligious help and consolation. Having acquired a compe- 
tency by his business, he, while comparatively a young 
man, retired with what he had, fearing lest the absorbing 
nature of commercial pursuits should weaken his human 
interests, and the passion to be rich should make him in- 
different to the needs of his fellow-men. The loss of two 
families, the first perishing by drowning before his eyes 
while he was looking for means of rescue, though they 
saddened, impoverished, and, for a time, desolated his life, 
made him neither morose, bitter, nor desperate. He turned 
himself bravely toward his consolers, seeking solace in his 
plants and flowers, the relief of friendship, and especially 
the resources of kindness. His sympathies were his com- 
forters. His interest in humanity was his saviour. Fond 
of children, he gathered them about him and gave them 
joy. Two large orphan asylums— one Romanist and one 
Protestant — stand on ground that he presented for the 
purpose from his own estate. His services as a public- 
spirited citizen are generally acknowledged. It is due to 
his sagacity, judgment, and perseverance that a very beau- 
tiful cemetery has been laid out in the city of his resi- 
dence. ~No good charity ever appeals to him in vain. His 
simple habits, unostentatious demeanor, gentle spirit, his 



LIVING FAITH. 85 

truthfulness, friendliness, and entire unworldliness, render 
him at once honored and beloved. 

Here is a thing to be explained. The living force in 
this rare but by no means singular man was not the infi- 
delity or the atheism ; nor was it any other mode of think- 
ing about religion that had taken the place of these juice- 
less negations. It was not speculative after any sort. 
It was the intimate connection he maintained with real 
interests. He clung to things ; he stuck to plain facts ; 
he did not wander away from palpable concerns. He had 
practical purposes which he lived for ; and, living for them, 
he lived all over. 

This is the secret of all vitality. A Greek fable tells of 
the giant Antaeus, who challenged and vanquished all 
comers till Hercules came. Hercules discovered after some 
wrestling that Antaeus derived all his strength from the 
ground. Whenever his feet were lifted from the soil, his 
vigor seemed to desert him ; but the least touch of his 
foot to the earth imparted to him new life. On making 
this discovery, the hero, with a vast effort, heaved his an- 
tagonist up, and strangled him in a terrible embrace while 
held in the air. 

So faith lives by contact with the ground. The living 
faitjis of the earth have owed, perhaps, the best portion 
of their power to an immediate, practical purpose that 
roused and directed their zeal. 

What faith has shown more living energy than the faith 
of the Israelites % Persecution has not killed it. Scorn 
has not discouraged it. Exile and dispersion have not 
scattered or decomposed it. It is flourishing nobly to-day. 
It builds its temples in the New World as majestic and 
gorgeous as those erected by the wealthiest Christian sect. 
It gathers its children, observes its customs, institutes its 
charities, cares for its poor, prints its journals, enunciates 



86 LIVING FAITH. 

its Law, with a spirit as lofty and a heart as tender as ever. 
If we ask to what this extraordinary vitality is owing, the 
answer is : !Not to its doctrine of One God, but to an in- 
domitable purpose, ruling and decisive in its early history, 
active in every episode of its career, sovereign now in its 
most zealous children, to secure and maintain the position 
of a peculiar people, called to a high destiny, and to that 
destiny set apart. To preserve and justify their title to 
the spiritual command ; to keep the race pure from out- 
ward admixture of blood, and from inward apostacy ; to 
fulfil the national conditions on which the divine favor 
was pledged, constitutes the deliberate aim and determina- 
tion of the Jewish people. Should this aim be lost sight 
of, this determination be relaxed, that moment would pro- 
bably mark the period of the faith's decline. Its sinews 
would be cut ; its power of movement would be paralyzed. 
There is nothing in its ideas that will save it. They will 
be lost in the ocean of modern thought. 

The Mohammedan Faith was a living faith so long as 
the national spirit animated the Arab races with an ambi- 
tion to plant their civilization in Europe. The sudden 
outbreak of Moslem life was prodigious. It was a nation's 
soul aflame. The religious beliefs were simple and bar- 
ren in the extreme. They had not inspiration enough in 
them to stir a tribe from lethargy. It was the determina- 
tion of the people to make themselves felt in history that 
made Mohammed's name a name of terror, and set the 
crescent above the cross. 

The Church of Rome has, and always has had in its 
days of power, a purpose, which is simply its own aggran- 
disement, the establishment of its rule and authority, the 
merging of other churches in itself, the gathering of all 
Christians into its communion. To accomplish this pur- 
pose was the ambition of the great popes ; to aid in it the 



LIVING FAITH. 87 

terrible Order of Jesus was instituted; to this end the 
preaching orders were commissioned ; the Holy Inquisi- 
tion exerted its pious offices toward this result. This is 
what Pius IX. is praying, protesting, calling councils, and 
publishing bulls for. The revival of this purpose will ex- 
plain the revival of energy in the old medieval religion. 
The church aims at dominion. It represents a policy, not 
a faith ; it means statecraft, not religion ; its priests are 
politicians. The absorption in temporal concerns keeps 
the spiritual enthusiasm burning. 

Protestantism has likewise an immediate object, which 
it never loses sight of. Its endeavor is to bring souls to 
Christ / a perfectly definite, tangible, practical thing to 
do ; a thing that excites ambition, rouses enthusiasm, en- 
lists determination, in truth, calls for all these qualities in 
extraordinary measure. The missionary societies labor in 
this interest ; the bible and tract societies hold this end in 
view ; the charitable societies derive inspiration from this 
purpose. Their " faith " does not animate their effort : it 
is their effort that animates their faith. 

The Society of Friends has exhibited great vitality. If 
we inquire into its causes, we shall find them, I think, not 
in the beautiful doctrine of the " Inner Light," but in the 
stubborn resistance to the spirit of worldliness in its con- 
spicuous forms. It was their battle with formalism, with 
the fashions of church and state, with ceremony, hollow- 
ness, and pretence, that called out the steadfast courage of 
those hearts. Would you find the secret of their power — 
read their rules of discipline, laid down as carefully as any 
military code, and in the palmy days of the society ob- 
served as conscientiously as if they were soldiers in 
presence of an enemy. While the discipline was maintained 
the sect flourished. But when idleness, frivolity, and fash- 
ion came in, and the world spirit* made its power felt 



88 LIVING FAITH. 

among its old assailants, the faith began to decline. It 
can scarcely be called a living faith now. 

If now we instance some Faith which, notwithstanding 
its pretensions to high spiritual ideas, has never fairly suc- 
ceeded in earning the title of a living faith — the Socinian 
or old-fashioned Unitarian — it will appear that its defect 
consists in the absence of any such purpose as I have de- 
scribed. It has no practical justification for itself. It is 
not working in the interest of a powerful organization 
like the Church of Rome. It is not toiling in the en- 
deavor to bring souls to Christ, like the " evangelical " Pro- 
testants. It offers no battle to worldliness ; flings down 
no challenge to music, art, literature, the drama ; engages 
in no deadly conflict with formalism, ritualism, or ceremon- 
ialism ; has, in fact, no well-defined foe. It does not toil 
to save men from hell, for it believes in no hell of flame 
and everlasting torment ; it does not toil to get men into 
heaven, for it believes in no such heaven as men can be 
u got into." The salvation of souls is hardly its object, 
for it does not put the issue between salvation and damna- 
tion with sufficient sharpness to engage the consecration 
of the will. The social improvement and elevation of 
men is not its object, for it has no working philosophy of 
social life. There are ideas enough in it ; but it lives in 
ideas, and like the giant Antaeus languishes there. No 
fine theological shadings, no ingenious biblical interpreta- 
tions furnish the requisites for contact with a world of re- 
alities. Not possessing any ruling impulse to do some- 
thing, it is not happy in the consciousness of being some 
thing. 

The living faith is the faith with a living purpose. What 
then is our living purpose ? What are we aiming at ? Let 
ns apply the rule to the new faith. For, bright, intellectu- 
al, spirited, and spiritual as this seems to be, it must con- 



LIVING FAITH. 89 

form to the conditions, or decline. It cannot live on air. 
Like all the rest it must feel called to a certain work, and 
the imperative necessity of doing that work nmst be forced 
upon it, or the anticipations of those who build on it will 
be disappointed. 

To me, the Radical faith has such a purpose, and on ac- 
count of it owes all the interest it possesses for me. The 
purpose is both negative in aspect and positive. 

On its negative side, the new faith proposes to itself the 
sacred duty of making war against the great spiritual 
powers of Dogmatism and Superstition ; regarding these 
powers by whomsoever wielded, in whatever guise arrayed, 
as being the foes of all pure religion. These powers, I say 
— for such they are — powers instituted, organized, ex- 
pressed in rite, symbol, creed, domiciled in churches, and 
represented by actual bodies of men. They present a de- 
finite object of attack, an object as definite as ever pre- 
sented itself to an assaulting column. The Hebrew faith 
never proposed a more distinct end to its prophets, priests, 
and zealots. The Mohammedan faith had no more palpa- 
ble intent when it entered on its determined struggle 
with idolatry. The Catholic faith moved toward no more 
clearly outlined end. The Protestant faith had in view 
no more tangible object. An assault on Dogmatism and 
Superstition is no more visionary or vague than an assault 
on the foul religions of the Canaanites, or the idolatries 
of Islam, the heresies of the middle age, or the infideli- 
ties of more modern times. 

The abolitionist, when he struck at slavery, had no more 
declared a foe ; the temperance men, in their wrestle with 
the demon of the still, do not confront a more distinctly 
avowed or defiant adversary. The people who rally to 
throw off the burdens that oppress the civil and social state 
of women, are not conscious of being pitted against a more 



90 LIVING FAITH. 

consolidated antagonist. Our enemy is at our doors ; he is 
noisy and violent ; the mischief he does is evident to the 
dullest perception ; his baleful influence is visible every- 
where. We would keep no terms with him, we would 
pursue him to his fastnesses, feeling that, in doing so, we 
are contending for the gravest interests of mankind. 

This is the new faith's negative work — its work of 
destruction ; work arduous and long, but extremely need- 
ful, demanding effort, patience, faith, courage, sacrifice — 
but rewarding all these with the conviction that the work 
is done for humanity, and will endure when the strife shall 
be ended. Nothing less than a new crusade is called for. 
If the Radical faith will undertake it, it will have a name 
and a virtue to live ; if it declines to undertake it, no bril- 
liancy of intellect or glow of anticipation will rescue it 
from death. 

The positive aim of the new faith is the creation and 
consecration of Character. This, too, is a definite, and, it 
may be said, an original purpose. For, although the old 
faith respects character, calls for it as the result of relig- 
ious training and the expression of spiritual experience, it 
has made it an incidental rather than a primary thing, an 
evidence of the religious life, not the sum and substance 
of it. It has given to character an artificial cast, a theo- 
logical tone, an unnatural twist that answered to the pecu- 
liar kind of training the church imposed. The old faith 
encouraged and cultivated a single type of character, with 
some degree, not an eminent degree, of success. But in 
character as a natural, vital development of the man, in 
plain human character, based on scientific grounds, avail- 
able for every day uses, good for ordinary life, it had no 
engrossing interest. It studied neither its elements, its 
laws, nor its operations. It was more concerned with 
"graces " than with virtues. And it prized the "graces M 



LIVING FAITH. 91 

for their talismanic potency in opening the gates of 
heaven to believers, rather than for their wholesome 
quality in sweetening society. 

The new faith concerns itself with the cultivation of 
simple human goodness as an end sufficient in and of itself. 
"Without reference to beliefs or sacraments, without refer- 
ence to the rewards of heaven or the punishments of 
hell, without any particular feeling that goodness is a 
thing well pleasing in the sight of God, or possesses any 
character of merit, the new faith emphasizes character in 
opposition to custom or credence, and whatever else raises 
a false issue with it; it not only puts character before 
everything else, it makes it a substitute for everything else, 
the one indispensable element in experience. And to this 
end it regards character not as the product of ecclesiastical 
discipline or theological education, not as a result of 
" Christian " or other religious tradition and training, but 
as the consummation of obedience to the plain facts of per- 
sonal and social life. 

Here, too, we have a definite end of attainment. As the 
Roman Church labors to bring men to Peter, as the Protes- 
tant churches toil to bring men to Christ, we endeavor to 
bring men to themselves. As Romanism aims at making 
men submissive, as Protestantism aims at making men 
believing, so we aim at making men self-respecting and 
true. The Catholic system would break men down ; the 
Protestant system would convert them ; we would teach 
them the laws of rational development. It is a work 
greatly needing to be done, and requiring the intelligent 
effort of many people who are united by a common aim 
and enthusiasm. A religious body that will plant itself 
on this rock, that will make character the solitary condition 
of fellowship, the sole test of worth, the single pledge of 
usefulness, and will make character consist of the simplest 



92 LIVING FAITH. 

lmman elements, truthfulness, for instance, fairness, hon- 
esty, fidelity to things in hand, not in high-flying " graces,'' 
or " evangelical " gifts or super-eminent attributes, but in 
the qualities that meet the exigencies of daily living — a 
religious body that will do this steadfastly will help to 
effect a practical revolution in religion. It will inaugurate 
a new Protestantism. It will precipitate a new departure 
from the ancient folds. 

That there exists any religious body that sees the neces- 
sity of this mission and accepts it, that comprehends it and 
works in it, I do not affirm. I do not declare this to be 
the actual endeavor, the deliberate, determined endeavor of 
the rational faith. But something like this should be 
its endeavor. If the new faith lives, it will be through its 
fidelity to this charge. The professors of it are, as yet, too 
much under the influence of their old-time associations ; 
too much implicated in the modes of thinking and feeling 
that prevail around them ; too much in thraldom to the 
powers that so long ruled their minds, to be fully awake to 
the demands made on their earnestness. Possibly another 
generation of men and women, with clearer eyes for actual 
issues, and braver hearts for radical toil, may have to come 
up and take charge of the great cause of protest against 
superstition, and of championship in favor of character. If 
the living Radical believers are too idle, too faint-hearted 
or too short-sighted to do it, others will appear in the future 
who have no such disabilities. The motto of these will 
be, and the motto will have kindling power over the mul- 
titude : 

" Down with Superstition ; up with Character." 



VI. 

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

"TV /JTY theine is the gospel of to-day — the gospel de- 
-L*-~L manded by to-day, suited to to-day's needs, ad- 
dressed to to-day's intelligence. The eternal gospel has 
its phases, being variously apprehended by the successive 
generations of mankind. Truth is one and the same ; its 
interpretations are many. An early Christian writer 
speaks of Jesus Christ as being " the same yesterday, 
to-day and forever ; " and so doubtless he is in his own 
spiritual essence. But the Jesus Christ of the Christian 
creeds shifts his position from one end of creation to the 
other. He occupies every place between simple humanity 
and the Supreme Being. He is mortal man, spiritual 
man, ideal man, angel, archangel, emanation from Deity, 
Deity itself ; being according to one apprehension meaner 
than the meanest, according to another, higher than the 
highest. Even the Eternal God reveals himself in time, 
each eye beholding as much of his face as it can. 

No gospel is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, for 
yesterday and to-day are not the same. Every day has its 
peculiar need which former days cannot supply or antici- 
pate. To be sure, there are constant needs, such as food, 
clothing, shelter, and for these the provisions are constant. 
Other needs are occasional, incidental, and though deep, 
not perpetual. Human nature has its moods and special 
exigencies, which must be met as they arise — the mood of 
gladness or of sadness, of penitence or of aspiration, of hu- 



94 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

initiation or of self-confidence, of depression or of joy ; and 
the gospel that addresses itself to the mood is the gospel 
for the day. 

The word "gospel" means good news. But what is 
good news to one man or one age is not necessarily good 
news to another ; it may be bad news, or indifferent news, 
or no news at all. Jesns brought to his countrymen the 
message that their Messiah had come to fulfill the promise 
made to their ancestors through the prophets, that the 
Messiah's kingdom should be established on the earth, and 
their dream of social felicity be realized. It was blessed 
tidings to the Jews, pining in bondage and sick with hope 
deferred. But it was not a message that the Greeks and 
Romans and Asiatics cared to hear; it was announcement 
of no future for them. 

Paul brought great news, namely, that the Christ was 
soon to come, in clouds of glory, to judge the world and 
save his own. The Christian world was on tip-toe of ex- 
pectation ; trembling, hoping for the time of its transfig- 
uration ; listening for the trumpets ; watching for the 
angels who should deliver the faithful from the rule of the 
oppressor and the misery of a world that seemed on the 
brink of destruction. But is this good news to us % Was 
it good news to the people of the next century % Do we 
look for the second coming of Christ ? Do we desire the 
end of the world ? Would it be a pleasant thought to any 
considerable number of people now, that they were liable 
at any moment to put on spiritual bodies and float away 
in the air ? 

Luther's gospel was good news to the hungering souls 
of his generation ; a veritable " gospel of the day." They 
wanted to hear that their salvation did not depend on the 
Church of Rome, the absolution of the priest, the grace 
of the mass, penance on the knees or with the whip, pay- 



THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 95 

ment of Peter's pence, daily paternoster and periodical 
confession. To hear that they might be saved by faith 
alone in the personal Saviour, and the interior change of 
the heart under the influence of the Holy Spirit, was some- 
thing that made their souls leap for joy. It was a procla- 
mation of spiritual freedom, restoring to them their man- 
hood. But the announcement produces no thrill of ecstasy 
now. The Church of Rome is nothing to us ; we have 
never been in bondage to it, and never expect to be. 
We have been spiritual freemen, we and our forefathers 
for generations. The gospel of Luther is an old and 
almost forgotten story ; the dust of ages stops the ears 
that hailed it. 

The great teacher gives voice to his time, not to all time. 
His doctrine is not his own, but the persuasion or the 
prophecy of his epoch. The Father who sends him is the 
spirit of his age, which imparts to him its need and its 
hope. I do not perceive that Jesus brought a new reve- 
lation, in the usual sense of the word, or, on his own 
authority, announced any unknown truth. As he heard, 
he spoke, and what he heard was the voice from the heart 
of his people. We find all his thoughts in the religious 
books of his nation ; sometimes expressed in the very 
same language he himself used, sometimes in phrases as 
expressive, though less felicitous than his own. His doc- 
trine, that God is creator, preserver, guide, comforter, 
immediate presence and providence, pitying father, is 
enunciated in most touching forms of speech many times 
over ; it is the burden of prophecy and psalm. His doc- 
trine, that the essence of religion was love to God and 
man, was as ancient as the literature of his race. That 
God loved mercy more than sacrifice, that spiritual worth 
made one greater than the temple and superior to the Sab- 
bath, that the kingdom of heaven was within and not 



96 TEE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

without, a moral, not a political state, were among the 
first principles of the wisdom he learned as a child. The 
" Golden Rule " was laid down explicitly by the earliest 
and latest masters in Hebrew ethics. The substance of the 
" Sermon on the Mount " may be picked up in different 
places all along the road of the national progress. The 
" Beatitudes," less exquisitely phrased than by his poetic 
lips, gem the pages of sacred song and grace the sentences 
of proverbial wisdom. Even the " Lord's Prayer " is 
made up of invocations and petitions that were familiar to 
the piety of his nation. 

Jesus voiced the purer and deeper consciousness of his 
race, feeling himself surrounded by the spirits of the past ; 
in his moments of ecstasy, holding spiritual communion 
with Moses and Elias. His " But I say unto you," was 
not the claim of a peculiar authority, distinct from that of 
other teachers, and above them, for he said that he came 
not to destroy the law and the orophets, but to fulfill them. 
It was rather the emphatic declaration of the superiority 
of the spirit to the letter, the claim and right of the soul of 
the faith to set aside the traditions, forms, and formularies 
of it. It was not himself he preached, but that which 
came to him and poured through him. 

Paul seemed to be an original teacher, with a gospel all 
his own ; a distinct and peculiar message, that had never 
been delivered before. But he took particular pains to 
say that nothing of the kind was true. The Hebrew scrip- 
tures, he said, rightly interpreted, contained all he had to 
communicate ; not in precise words, perhaps, but in sym- 
bol and allegory. The first thing Paul did, in addressing 
a Jewish audience, was to convince them by ingenious 
exposition of scripture, that his message had been fore- 
shadowed in the beginning, and ought to be received as 
timely, the appointed word of the hour. 



THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 97 

We think of Luther as standing up and delivering a 
new doctrine on new authority. But he did no such thing. 
His doctrine was as old, at least, as the New Testament, 
where it had slumbered for a thousand years, and whence 
he derived it. He spoke out of the heart of the Christian 
theology as well as out of his own heart, feeling that his 
own spiritual experience brought him in closest sympathy 
with those who most deeply believed and most fervently 
prayed. 

Channing, though pushed out of the churches and 
forced into a position of isolation and antagonism, preach- 
ing what appeared to be a new gospel, never claimed 
the character of a solitary prophet. He appealed to 
the New Testament, believed that he had the sympathy 
of the purest souls in Christendom, and felt that Jesus 
stood by his side. The Father that sent him was the 
human nature in whose capacity and dignity he put his 
trust. He was sure that natural goodness, affection, truth, 
and justice were on his side, and in that company he could 
not feel alone. 

Theodore Parker, that monumental man who stood like 
a solitary oak-tree in the middle of a plain — the indepen- 
dent soul, strong of thought and strong of speech, stand- 
ing up against Bible, church, and creed, casting off his 
ecclesiastical and doctrinal leanings, throwing down the 
props of ceremonial, and stepping forth into the open air 
of thought — nevertheless spake not as of himself, set up 
to be no originator' or discoverer, but pointed to a Father 
who had sent him. This Father spoke to him in many 
voices of teacher, philosopher, sage, and saint, bearing 
witness to the essential needs and the living hopes of 
humanity. Most clearly and emphatically he addressed 
him in the profound convictions which he claimed were 
native to the universal heart, and which gave immediate 

5 



98 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

demonstration of God, immortality, and the moral law. 
None was ever simpler, humbler, more docile than this 
sturdy man as he waited on the bidding of the Lord. 

No teacher stands outside, independent of all constitu- 
ency. The most radical teacher has the largest constitu- 
ency, draws from the deepest well, catches the purest 
breath in his sail. Mr. Abbot is conscious of walking in a 
large company, and feels his inadequacy to discharge the 
message entrusted to him as keenly as ever did an Augus- 
tine or a Paul. 

The preacher of to-day has a gospel of to-day. 

What now is this gospel \ First, let us ask, What was 
the gospel it hopes to supplant ? What was the gospel of 
yesterday and the day before % 

The gospel of yesterday proclaimed the glad tidings of 
deliverance from sin. It addressed man as a sinner, need- 
ing supernatural aid and rescue. The alleged fact of sin 
was the sole occasion of the message. To appreciate the 
message you must appreciate the occasion — deliverance 
from sin. Not from ignorance, error, mistake, stupidity, 
prejudice, immaturity, inexperience, inherited or acquired 
disability, the effects of an untaught or undisciplined 
mind ; but from an " inward deep disease ; " a subtle, 
malign, inwrought, organic power ; a law of corruption 
and demoralization ; a taint in the blood ; a traditional 
malady ; an inherited curse, which was incurable except 
by divine and special aid. 

To this little word Paul gave the deadly significance it 
has borne ever since. Jesus rarely used it, and never in 
its present theological meaning. It occurs but once in 
Matthew. It occurs in John but seven times, and only 
once in a deeper than the usual sense of wrong-doing. In 
the single epistle to the Romans it recurs more than thirty 
times, and always loaded with the most terrible signifi- 



THE GOSPEL OF TOD AT. 99 

cance. It was the key-note of Paul's theology, the soul 
of his religion. " The bondage of sin," " the law of sin," 
" the dominion of sin," are phrases often repeated in his 
letters. He exhausts his remarkable powers of language 
in describing its irresistible and fatal sway. He ascribes 
to it physical death, moral disorder, mental decrepitude, 
and spiritual imbecility. Starting with Adam, it had gone 
on gaining power from ages ; plunging the races of men 
into the pit from which they could not rise. It had ac- 
quired the force of an elemental law, which took every- 
thing under its sway, and drove all the human family be- 
fore it as the breath of the thunder-storm drives before it 
the loose straw of the pavement. The risen Christ, risen 
because sinless, broke the charm, and opened the way by 
which, through faith in him, the rescued believers might 
escape from the doom. 

In the middle ages, the central thought of theology was 
the thought of sin. The Church of Rome was an organi- 
zation for the deliverance of mankind from sin and its 
consequences. For this the hierarchy was instituted ; for 
this the priest was consecrated, the altar built, the mass 
celebrated, the sacrament administered, the rule and ordi- 
nance prescribed. Baptism washed out inherited sin ; con- 
firmation imparted strength to overcome actual sin ; com- 
munion kept the soul in concurrence with the source of 
power ; penance chastised sinful desire ; absolution re- 
leased from the penalties of sin committed ; extreme unc- 
tion imparted consolation and promise of blessedness to 
the dying. At every turn the sinner was met by the de- 
liverer. Take the idea of sin away, and you deprive the 
church of the whole ground of its existence ; you abolish 
it, or reduce it to a shade that ought to be exorcised. 

Protestantism made more poignant and intense the con- 
viction of sin, by making it more personal. Luther and 



100 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

Calvin dwelt perpetually on the private experience of sin, 
pressing the matter home to the individual consciousness ; 
driving it in, so to speak, with. all their prodigious power 
of statement, argument and exhortation. What were the 
Lutheran or the Calvinistic theology, with the total de- 
pravity, the vicarious sacrifice, the atonement, the Saviour, 
intercessor and mediator, justification, sa notification, final 
rescue and salvation, if this idea of sin were taken away ? 
Evangelical Christianity, as it is called, owes all its vitality 
to that idea ; would be utterly barren and meaningless with- 
out it ; would, in fact, be sheer nonsense without it. 

The liberal sects of Protestantism, Unitarians and Uni- 
versalists, use the word with such effect as they may in 
sermon and prayer ; fill it out with meaning as well as 
they can ; keep it sounding, at all events, whether emptily 
or not, well knowing that if they drop it from their theo- 
logical vocabulary there will be an end of their system. 
If they cannot say " sin," they cannot say " Christ;" and 
if they cannot say " Christ," they must hold their peace. 
The doctrine of sin is indispensable to them, for the only 
good news they have to bring is that a way of escape from 
sin is provided. 

It is a common persuasion that the consciousness of sin 
is a deep-seated and indestructible fact in human nature, a 
fact that we cannot get away from, the existence of which 
is inexplicable, except on the ground that men are sinners 
and need salvation. But this is the precise point that I 
call in question. It is not difficult to account for the so- 
called " sense of sin," or for the belief that men are sinful 
creatures. Human experience was not the mother of it, 
as much as human speculation and sentiment. The specu- 
lation began in the East with contemplative men, who 
strove after states of mind with which the necessities of 
common life interfered. In their efforts to disengage 



THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 101 

themselves from the " bondage of the flesh," as they called 
it — that is, from the necessity of providing for their bodily 
wants — they contracted a dread and an abhorrence of their 
bodily appetites. Their passions became in their eyes evil 
and the source of evil. The " animal " nature was at war 
with the " spiritual." Their souls were " imprisoned " in 
matter, and to effect its deliverance was the wise man's 
highest dutv. The world was a scene of penance ; life a 
process of discipline and purification. The sages, in their 
writings, dwelt fervently on this aspect of things. Their 
litanies were burdens of contrition, supplications to be de- 
livered from the fatal tyranny of the body. 

From the East these thoughts traveled Westward. They 
filled the air that Paul breathed ; they possessed Paul's 
mind ; they became the cardinal thoughts of his system. 
The sense of weakness gave them intensity and sent them 
home to the heart. A sense of infirmity is generally 
accompanied by a sense of guilt. Helplessness is always 
ready to make confession of wickedness. Seasons of de- 
pression are seasons of contrition. The times in which 
Paul lived were heavy with anxiety and discouragement. 
The Hebrew state was on the eve of dissolution ; signs and 
portents were in the sky ; society was disorganizing, and 
all knew and felt it ; the people groaned under oppressive 
rulers ; property was unsafe ; life was insecure ; the coun- 
try shook with suppressed war ; labor was precarious ; pov- 
erty was frightful ; suffering, in every form, was hideous ; 
the iron tramp of the Roman legions was heard in the dis- 
tance ; the war cloud that was to envelop the nation came 
rolling on ; the spirit of delusion and fanaticism seized on 
the people ; madmen saw visions, and enthusiasts dreamed 
dreams ; melancholy deepened into despair, and despair 
rushed into suicide ; from no quarter came promise of 
help. Then, in their utter bewilderment, the frightened, 



102 THE GOSPEL OF TO DAY. 

frantic people turned their eyes up to heaven, and dropped 
on their knees groaning and entreating. 

Similar outbreaks of passion have occurred more than 
once in history. At the close of the tenth century a por- 
tion of Europe was possessed by the belief that the world 
was coming to an end in flame. The condition of human- 
ity was most deplorable. The earth seemed ready for 
burning, and the agony of weakness easily changed into an 
agony of prayer. In the course of our late civil war, when 
the Government was apparently brought to bay, when the 
bloodshed was too appalling to think of, when volunteering 
ceased, and the draft was resisted, and civil war menaced 
the North, and the mob spirit began to rise, the panic of 
penitential fear seized the popular heart, and convulsed it 
with terrible spasms. Fasts were appointed, crowds flocked 
to the churches, orthodoxy stirred up its fires, revival 
preachers plied their whips on the naked, quivering souls, 
and we heard of nothing but sin and judgment. The tide 
of public affairs turned, and the sackcloth was put off. 

The financial distress of 1857 shook the souls of men 
even more fiercely. The collapse of credit; the fall of 
great commercial houses, burying humbler establishments 
beneath their ruins ; the widespread impoverishment, the 
overwhelming bankruptcy, the general distrust, the crazing 
helplessness, brought the usual feeling of moral infirmity 
and spiritual desperation. The professors of the art of agi- 
tation produced their instruments of torture once more, 
and went to work to sting, prick, score and scarify the sen- 
sitive conscience of sin. One of the greatest " revivals " 
of the century took place. The whole land was shaken ; 
the preacher's exhortation was responded to by groans, 
cries, confessions, that seemed to indicate that the heart of 
the world was breaking. The return of prosperity and the 
restoration of commercial credit dispelled the illusion. 



THE GOSPEL OF TO-BAY. 103 

The spectres vanished ; the ministers of the revival picked 
up their tools and disappeared ; the churches were shut, 
and men recovered their serenity. 

The "sense of sin" had another justification in the 
gigantic immoralities of former times. More than one 
emperor was a monster of wickedness ; great princes and 
nobles, even priests, cardinals and popes, illustrated, in 
obscene and villainous ways, the bestial elements in human 
nature ; eminent statesmen and philosophers practiced, 
now and then, vices that would put modern shamelessness 
to the blush. The powerful tyrannized, the rich plun- 
dered, the great outraged justice, the holy violated decency. 
That at the decline and fall of the Roman Empire a belief 
in human depravity should have prevailed, is not surpris- 
ing. A conviction of sin was all but a necessity when the 
most conspicuous men were the most conspicuous sin- 
ners. 

Such supports as these had the doctrine of sin — such 
were its generating causes. But none of these causes exist 
now with any force. The first certainly does not, for the 
contemplative life is confined to the very few. It may be 
said that there is no conscious war between the terrestrial 
and the celestial life of men. We are quite content with 
our bodies and their corporeal environment. To be disem- 
bodied is not the general desire. Very rarely, indeed, do 
we find a Plotinus who is ashamed of his fiesh. 

Nor is our age oppressed with a feeling of helplessness. 
Far enough from that ! If we are oppressed by anything, 
it is by a feeling of our sufficiency. Small sense of imbe- 
cility, the minimum of misgiving, have people who under- 
take the management of all their own concerns, choose 
their rulers, make their laws, set up their institutions, pre- 
vent famine, beat off plague, stamp out cholera, travel by 
steam, talk in lightning, and make the forces of nature do 



104 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

their work. Sense of sin, indeed ! It is no easy task to 
start a feeble and evanescent feeling of modesty or humil- 
ity — to make them " realize M the fact that they are some- 
thing less than omnipotent and omniscient, infallible and 
impeccable. The extravagance of their conceit is as huge 
as the former extravagance of contrition. Our enthusiasts 
talk of reducing everything to actual science, and ensuring 
all possible good to everybody. They promise prevention 
of disease, indefinite duration of life, perfectly congenial 
marriages, assurance of healthy offspring, the extirpation 
of hereditary taint, and the redemption of natural exist- 
ence from all its ills by an easy obedience to known prin- 
ciples of hygiene. We hear of balloon carriages and arti- 
ficial flying apparatus, by which we shall be enabled to 
move like birds through the air. To suggest to such peo- 
ple that they are sinners, has an air of grotesqueness that 
borders on absurdity. Their confidence in themselves, 
however overweening, has, at least, solid ground enough 
to make impossible any general persuasion like that. 

The sense of sin is not countenanced now by gigantic 
private or social enormities. There are bad men, unprin- 
cipled gangs of men, criminals, marauders, and plunder- 
ers ; but there are no corrupt orders or classes of men. 
There is no wholesale oppression of the weak, no system- 
atic grinding of the poor, no general defrauding of the 
ignorant, no deliberately organized inhumanities. The 
rogues who swindle the public, the plotters and schemers 
who corrupt legislatures, are seen and known of all good 
men. The public are warned against them, the press 
exposes them, opinion denounces them ; their proceedings 
are noticed, their ways tracked, their plans fathomed, their 
motives understood, their character dissected, their doom 
foretold. Intemperance and licentiousness are frightful 
evils, but less frightful by far than they were, and are 



THE GOSPEL OF TODAY. 105 

made the mark for general and earnest attack. The virtue 
of the community is pledged and banded against them. 
There is conscience enough to put all the most grievous 
ills away, to banish the rogues, strip the plunderers, 
dethrone the tyrants of the railway and the " ring," if the 
way to do it were only discovered, if moral force were but 
seconded by sagacity. At all events, we feel that our fate 
is in our own hands ; confidence in natural ability is 
restored ; the force of honesty and ordinary virtue is con- 
ceded. No one thinks of calling in supernatural aid to 
break up the " ring " at Albany, or confound the machin- 
ations of Fisk and Gould. We ask no intervention of 
miracle-working saviours to redeem us from intemperance 
or rescue us from the dominion of the "social vice." If 
wit, intelligence, prudence, self-love, love of the public 
good, love of humanity, love of God, will not enable us to 
redeem ourselves, nothing will. 

The consciousness of sin, therefore, is gone ; the doc- 
trine of sin is obsolete ; the idea of sin has lost its hold on 
the mind ; and with the sense of sin disappears the ap- 
paratus for securing salvation from sin. Farewell to in- 
carnate divinity, saviour, intercessor, mediator; farewell 
to priest and altar ; farewell to church and dogma, to re- 
vealed theology and sanctifying rite, to formularies of faith 
and ecclesiastical authorities ! Men are not sinners. Dolts 
they maybe — blunderers, dunces, simpletons, fools, wrong- 
doers from ignorance, dullness, inexperience, immaturity, 
from unbalanced minds, untrained tempers, undeveloped 
consciences ; but sinners, in the old theological or " evan- 
gelical " sense of the word, no more. The gospel that an- 
nounced the glad tidings of salvation finds few hearers 
among the people of to-day. That message is not listened 
for. It meets no eager want, and multitudes refuse to go 
where it is spoken. 

5* 



106 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 

Another idea is substituted for the idea of sin — the idea 
of Rectitude. The rectitude of human nature / not its 
finished perfection, not its complete integrity, but the 
wholesomeness of its elements and the sacredness of its 
constitution. Man is not a perfect machine ; if he were, 
he would run more evenly than he does ; he would not 
get out of order or dash off the track. He is an organic 
being, with powers of expansion and capacities of develop- 
ment ; but the law by which he is organized secures all 
this, if obeyed, not thwarted. He is to take his constitution 
as it is and make more of it, unfolding its faculties and 
persuading it to grow in beauty. The " good news " of 
to-day imports that this growth is possible, that man is not 
divided against himself, that social interests are not at 
war, that all the powers are in sympathy and correspond- 
ence. 

By contrasting in a few particulars, the gospel of yester- 
day with the gospel of to-day, this essential difference will 
be made apparent. 

The gospel of yesterday announced faith in Christ 
as its prime postulate ; the gospel of to-day announces 
faith in human nature. 

The gospel of yesterday bade sit at Jesus' feet; the 
gospel of to-day bids stand on our own. 

The gospel of yesterday counseled repose on Jesus' 
bosom ; the gospel of to-day exhorts to " rally the good in 
the depths of yourself." 

The gospel of yesterday proclaimed the saving efficacy 
of the church, as a close corporation, membership in which 
secured the concurrence of the Holy Ghost : the gospel of 
to-day proclaims the advent of a free society, membership 
in which guarantees participation in all the blessings of a 
common life. 

The gospel of yesterday offered salvation through sacra- 



THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 107 

merits, prayers, pious exercises, and devout observances ; 
the gospel of to-day offers mental and moral health, through 
education, culture, enlightenment, and training. 

The gospel of yesterday promised saintliness and its re- 
ward to those who subdued and suppressed themselves — 
to the self-renouncing, the self-condemning, the self-cruci- 
fying ; the gospel of to-day promises wholeness and its re- 
wards to those who enlarge, expand, develop, and perfect 
themselves — to the noble, the earnest, the aspiring. 

The gospel of yesterday praised the beauty of submis- 
sion : the gospel of to-day sings the benefits of liberty. 

The gospel of yesterday set up as a model the converted 
man: the gospel of to-day erects as its model the natural 
man. 

The gospel of yesterday promised immortality as a boon 
to believers in the Christ : the gospel of to-day promises im- 
mortality as the natural inheritance of rational beings, the 
extension of rational existence beyond the grave. 

The gospel of yesterday opened a vision of happiness in 
another world : the gospel of to-day opens a vision of hap- 
piness here on earth. 

These are grave- and sharp contrasts, which admit of no 
reconciliation. 

Is it asked on what authority the new gospel is preach- 
ed ? Not on the authority of instituted church, revealed 
doctrine, or inspired Bible ; not on the authority of any 
individual teacher or set of teachers. It claims no miracu- 
lous authentication ; it professes not to be the old word 
under a new interpretation, but is willing to stand on its 
own merits. That it is in accord with the tendencies of 
modern thought, in sympathy with current speculation, 
may be urged as in its favor. But its title to acceptance 
is based on its reasonableness. It makes peace between the 
two worlds, the temporal and the eternal. The deadly 



108 THE GOSPEL OF TODAY. 

fault of the present systems of religion is their failure to 
combine with the present systems of politics, reform, trade, 
education, public activity. The thinkers and the worship- 
pers hold no communion, have no common sympathy, 
share no interests, mingle in no enterprises. Science and 
faith are at war. Philosophy and faith are in perpetual 
disagreement. Reform and religion meditate different 
achievements and draw in opposite directions. The social 
economists and the preachers do not understand one an- 
other, get in each other's way, cross each other's track, 
fight each other's proceedings. The two worlds of busi- 
ness and worship do not circle in the same orbit. Men do 
not trade and pray in the same breath. Commerce with 
men and commerce with God are appointed for different 
days. Sense and soul tear one another. 

The effect of this is most disastrous. Nothing of mo- 
ment can be done. No great thing that demands a con- 
spiracy of all the great powers, of thought and feeling, 
prudence and passion, will and wisdom, knowledge and 
sentiment, sagacity and aspiration, can be so mnch as at- 
tempted. No cause of political or social reform, no mat- 
ter of deep human concern in which the interests of 
thousands are involved, can be carried through even the 
preliminary stages of discussion. Religious conviction is 
sure to come in sharp collision with worthy common-sense, 
and laudable enterprises are thus baffled at the start. On 
what should be the smoothest road, we go hitching, hob- 
bling, grating along, to the ruin of our machinery and the 
exasperation of our tempers. Unless this radical evil can 
be removed, it is difficult to see how society is ever to go 
on in a career of wholesome improvement. It is impos- 
sible to live at the same in New York and in Jerusalem. 
Human nature has no more ability than it requires for its 
daily needs, and if the highest order of its energies is shut 



THE GOSPEL OF TO DAY. 109' 

up in a church and held in reserve for extra-mundane pur- 
poses, the amount of disposable force must be seriously 
abridged. 

The gospel of to-day proposes to remedy this defect by 
abolishing the discord in question, by making it possible 
to think and pray at the same time, and this it proposes 
to accomplish by substituting a rational for an irrational 
principle, and setting both religion and life to a new key. 
It promises to do this, and, if accepted, will do it. It holds 
the key of the situation. 

Some may ask: Why, if this gospel is truly such a 
message of gladness, is it not more cordially welcomed ? 
Why is its following so small ? Why are its churches so 
few ? Why are its preachers so feeble ? We might 
answer the question by asking another. When was it 
otherwise 1 What new gospel was ever welcomed with 
enthusiasm ? Jesus left a handful of disciples. The re- 
sult of Paul's ardous labor was a group of churches, in all 
comprising but a few hundreds of people, probably, none 
of them absolutely solid and settled in his faith. Luther's 
"good tidings" did not kindle the world. Channing's 
fell upon dull ears. Parker's met with a heartier response, 
but even his did not run very swiftly. Too many ears 
must be unstopped to allow a ready access to new ideas. 
The more need that they who have heard the new tidings, 
have received and hailed the message, have been kindled 
or quieted, stirred or soothed by it, lifted by it to new life, 
or composed by it to new serenity, should labor to com- 
municate to others the gospel that they are sure the world 
needs. 



VII. 

THE GOSPEL OF CHAKACTEK. 

~T ET our theme be Character : the Gospel of Character. 
-*— ^ In the book of Micah, an old Testament writing, 
occurs the familiar passage : " He hath told thee, O man, 
what is good : and what doth the Lord require of thee 
but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy 
God ? " The New Testament contains many such state- 
ments. Jesus says, "Whatsoever things ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is 
the law and the prophets." Paul writes : " All the law is 
fulfilled in this one word : thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." James declares : " If ye fulfill the royal law 
according to the Scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself, ye do well." 

Passing from the Hebrew and Christian writings to the 
sacred writings of other religions, we find in the Koran, 
among other great sayings, this : " A single hour of jus- 
tice is worth seventy years of prayer." We open the 
" Analects " of Confucius, and light on this passage : 
" When a man's character is right, the whole empire will 
turn to him with recognition and submission." Similar 
declarations of faith may be found in other literatures. I 
could cite language equally emphatic from the Greek 
poets, the Roman philosophers, the Eastern sages, the 
ancient oracles of Persia, India, Egypt, the modern litera- 
ture of every country and race, the moral essays, treatises, 



THE GOSPEL OF CHABACTEB. HI 

discourses of eminent men of all theological complexions, 
believers and unbelievers. 

The gospel of character is the one universal gospel, 
proclaimed everywhere in all ages ; always in the same 
spirit, always with essentially the same substance, fre- 
quently in the same language. It is the gospel of no 
church, or sect, or religion, but of humanity. All have a 
right to preach it ; none have the right to claim it as 
exclusively their own. It is no more Christian than it is 
Pagan. The atheist promulgates it as earnestly as the 
theist ; the materialist may stand by it as loyally as the 
spiritualist. It is the voice of experience, the verdict of 
the moral nature of man. 

The first truth of this gospel is that character is the 
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last word, the 
beginning and the end of religion. It is more than altar 
and sacrifice, more than creed and confession, more than 
ordinance or custom. Character is substantial and essen- 
tial. It is good and sufficient of itself. Add to it all the 
theologies in or out of Christendom, and it will be no 
greater or worthier. Take from it everything that men 
in churches call belief, and it will not be diminished in 
dignity or cheapened in worth. It fulfills all offices. It 
is courage in danger, fortitude in suffering, patience under 
calamity, peace in trouble, calmness in agitation, consola- 
tion in grief. It answers all questions, solves all prob- 
lems. It is ready for any emergency. It is prepared to 
die and glad to live. It has no fear, or distrust, or hope- 
lessness. What it is, is well pleasing in the sight of God 
and men. It dreads no hell, and it sighs for no heaven ; 
for it cannot fear that which vanishes at its approach ; 
and it cannot long for that which it carries about with it. 

The effects that would follow the reception of this 
gospel of character, the effects that might attend its 



112 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

earnest preaching, may easily be conjectured. Were it 
possible to suppose that all the preachers in the City of 
New York might discontinue their weekly thrashing of 
straw, and devote themselves entirely to unfolding and 
enforcing this gospel of character, telling men what good- 
ness is, and. how they may get it, it would be possible to 
picture as the result of their efforts a changed condition 
of society. A new spirit would be breathed into public 
and private life ; a new tone would be imparted to the 
sentiments and purposes of men and women ; a new aim 
for endeavor, a new standard of action, would be imme- 
diately proposed. Yice would be discountenanced, crime 
overawed, wickedness rebuked and stayed. Great evils 
would sensibly diminish ; politics would be purged of 
corruption ; governments would become reputable ; com- 
merce would acquire dignity ; trade would be purified ; 
journalism would cease to be a scandal. The wealthy 
and influential classes would be thrilled and stirred by a 
new sense of responsibility ; the unprivileged classes 
would feel the smart and tingle of a hitherto undiscovered 
self-respect. A sudden economy of intellectual and moral 
power would render practicable the concentration of a 
vast reserve of spiritual force on objects of urgent im- 
portance. Jealousies would be laid aside, hatreds abated, 
divisions abolished, false issues discarded ; and, as a con- 
sequence of this, a simultaneous effort would be made to 
apply the plain principles of the moral law to the work 
of redeeming the earth. 

This being true — and there seems to be no good reason 
for questioning the truth of it — this gospel of character 
being so simple, so luminous, so universally recognized, 
so earnestly advocated, so heartily approved, the neglect 
of it is the great marvel. If the principles of it are so 
self-evident, why are they not cordially taken up and 



THE GOSPEL OF CHABAOTEB. 113 

enforced by religious teachers ? Why so much backward- 
ness of profession % Why so much indifference, coldness, 
discouragement towards those who transfer their emphasis 
from articles of credence to qualities of being ? 

The answer is that the gospel of character is not as 
unreservedly accepted as we might at first suppose. Char- 
acter itself is not placed in the position accorded to it by 
the great souls of the race. Of course, all good men 
believe in goodness ; all worthy men, of whatever relig- 
ious name, believe in truthfulness, justice, honesty, down- 
rightness, and uprightness. But the belief is not primary, 
cardinal, or fundamental. It is made conditional on other 
beliefs, and therefore secondary. Many things are placed 
before it in time and in importance, rites, observances, 
traditions, formulas, to which attention is first paid, and 
these require so much attention that, before they can be 
dispatched, the end and aim of them all, character, has 
vanished from view. 

Let me, with requisite detail, elaborate and illustrate 
my point : 

In the first place allow me to advert to a doctrine com- 
mon to all the " Evangelical " sects, and conspicuous in 
their scheme, which seems to preclude entirely the preach- 
ing of the gospel of character, and even make character 
itself unreal, a shadowy and spectral thing. I mean the 
popular doctrine of atonement, reconciliation with God 
through the merits of Christ. The doctrine appears in 
several different forms ; sometimes it is intimated that the 
Christ bore the penalty of our sins ; sometimes it is im- 
plied that through his living and dying, a vast fund of 
merit was accumulated sufficient to meet all possible 
demands of sinful men. This fund being deposited with 
the church, an inexhaustible treasure, may be drawn from 
on certain conditions of faith, thus affording any man an 



114 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

opportunity of paying his debts with another person's 
money, and cancelling his undischarged obligations with 
another's conscience. A great deal has been and still is 
said of the necessity of clinging to the cross, resting on 
the bosom of the Saviour, flinging one's self uncondition- 
ally into the arms of the Redeemer, accepting unreservedly 
the boon of undeserved grace. We hear the phrase 
" imputed righteousness," which suggests the idea that 
goodness may be transferred, carried over like some private 
possession from one person to another. 

What such expressions may mean I do not pretend to 
understand. To my mind they convey no sense what- 
ever. They are unintelligible. They who use them 
attach significance to them, no doubt, and significance 
that is entirely compatible with individual virtue and 
dignity and worth. But to me these modes of speech hint 
at ideas that are inconsistent not merely with any gospel 
of character, but with such a thing as we understand 
character to be. They forbid the preaching up of char- 
acter as the all-important, indispensable, radical thing. 
They forbid any proper analysis of character, any true 
investigation of its sources or laws, any just appreciation 
of its elements or conditions. The gospel they imply is 
a gospel of redemption and atonement, bristling with 
theological points. The preacher makes it his business to 
descant on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the depravity 
of human nature, the necessity of faith in the atoning 
sacrifice, the need of supernatural conversion and restor- 
ing grace. These preliminary matters occupy so much 
attention that character is pushed out of sight, almost 
forgotten, it appears. If regarded as the end of all the 
believing, prayer, trusting, the end is so far off that it 
looks shadowy. In any event, character becomes quite a 
secondary and incidental concern. Not that any cordial 



THE GOSPEL OF CHABACTEB. 115 

believer in the "evangelical" theology despises it, neglects 
it, sets a mean estimate upon it, or counts it of small mo- 
ment as a sign or test of the spiritual mind. But the cordial 
believer does not make it a primary consideration, does 
not come at it directlv, ordeal with it as the one absorbing* 
interest. 

Does not this whole cast of thought and speech militate 
against the very idea of building up, training character ? 
The most important element in character — the cardinal 
element, in fact — is that of personality , of individual pos- 
session. If anything is our own, character must be. 
One's virtue cannot be another's. Nobody can be good 
for his neighbor. "What sort of thing is imputed- right- 
eousness, transferred sacrifice ? Apples tied to the twigs 
of an apple-tree ; flowers glued to a rose-bush. The Ro- 
mish conception of superfluous worth that is available for 
those who have no worth of their own, makes all worth a 
species of paper currency that is good whether the holder 
have earned it or stolen it. A book pasted full of autumn 
leaves is not a forest tree. 

It is not enough to say that a man's character is his 
own. A man's character is the man himself. Take away 
his character and you reduce him to a shade, a simulacrum, 
a hollow mask or sjiell. The character is the disciplined 
thought, feeling, purpose, passion, ' will of the person. 
What would he be without it ? An image empty of 
thought, feeling, purpose, passion, or will ; no person, that 
is, at all ; a casket, perhaps, of foreign jewels ; a recepta- 
cle of imported goods ; a warehouse of purchased manu- 
factures, but no human being. 

In another way the prevalent doctrine of vicarious 
reconciliation, imputed righteousness, transferred merit, 
proves fatal to the gospel of character, namely, by substi- 
tuting a wholly different creation in its place. Character, 



116 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

according to any rational conception of it, consists of the 
genuine, natural stuff, the very prime material of our 
common humanity. It is the last best product of experi- 
ence and discipline working on the mass that is furnished 
by temperament, impulse, desire, affection, moral instinct, 
and resolution. It assumes the substantial worth of these 
organic elements; and only on this assumption does the 
discipline and effort required to bring them into shape 
possess any moral quality. But if these elements be, 
through natural depravity, useless for divine purposes ; if 
the raw material be unfit for the wedding garment ; if it 
must all be condemned as sleazy, rotten refuse, filthy i*ags, 
good for the waste-bag, the construction of character be- 
comes quite impossible and inconceivable. No training 
will avail where the qualities trained are destitute of 
capability or soundness. Discipline is wasted on rubbish. 
Experience is thrown away on a being whose nature has 
no consistency or power of healthy progress. The attri- 
butes that are imparted by special grace, as the result of a 
new heart formed by the supernatural influence of the 
Holy Ghost, may be yerj heavenly, but they do not in 
any sense constitute character. They come from another 
than a human source, and are made of other than human 
material. They are not the fruit of watching and striving ; 
they have not been earned ; they are a gift, not a posses- 
sion ; a boon, not an acquisition ; an imparted grace, not 
a substantial virtue. They may present something more 
seraphic and celestial than character, but they do not pre- 
sent character. They are made not of natural, but of 
ethereal stuff; they are obtained not by moral, but by 
miraculous* means. 

If we are to comprehend character as it is, in its qual- 
ity, law, sources, developments, we must discard these 
theological notions, which are potent in raising false issues, 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. H7 

interposing veils and obstacles, diverting thought from the 
practical problems in hand, and putting endeavor on the 
wrong paths. We must cease to expect from foreign 
sources what can come from native struggle alone. We 
must look facts in the face. Until this is done, the strong 
questions which slip through the theologian's hands will 
go undealt with, and the urgent business of private and 
public reform will remain undone. 

But there are other obstacles of a different kind which 
stand in the way of the noble culture of character that the 
times demand. There are those who reject with even un- 
necessary emphasis the evangelical doctrine respecting 
human nature, yet are almost as far as its believers are 
from a clear apprehension of this new gospel : people 
who, while admitting that character is the primary and 
essential thing, confessing its supreme importance, recog- 
nizing the fact that it is constituted of natural human 
stuffs, acknowledging that it is a great achievement of 
patience, fortitude, courage, faith, and hope, claiming that 
it is man's duty and privilege to work out this great result 
for himself — in a word, committing themselves to all the 
first principles I have laid down, render their whole pro- 
fession inoperative by insisting that the basis, the only 
valid basis, of character is the ethical code of the New 
Testament. Of course, they say, character is the end of all 
believing ; but there must be believing in order that there 
may be character, and the object of belief is the New 
Testament and the words of Jesus. But for them, study 
of them, devoted contemplation and observance of them, 
virtue, if not impossible, is very uncertain, precarious, and 
unsatisfactory. The Sermon on the Mount, illustrated by 
its author, gives the perfect standard of character, presents 
the strongest inducements to cultivate character, lays 
down the rules for training character, prescribes the par- 



118 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

ticular qualities that should predominate in character, and 
holds up the prize which is to reward its attainment. 

So certain are they that this method of cultivating 
character is the only legitimate one, that they make 
character secondary to the New Testament. This is my 
first criticism on their position. The gospel they preach 
is not the gospel of character but the gospel of belief. 
They have much to say about the genuineness of the New 
Testament, the authenticity of its record, the importance 
of reading it with implicit faith, the surprising grandeur 
of its moral ideas, the miracle of moral beauty exhibited 
in Jesus, the need that all should sit at his feet, and look 
up to him with prof oundest reverence. They have much 
less to say about honesty, veracity, justice, fair dealing 
between man and man. The numerous preliminaries pre- 
vent their getting earnestly at work with men and their 
affairs. Their problems are all speculative, and semi-theo- 
logical. 

A graver objection to their method is, that it is un- 
scientific. They would ground character on texts instead 
of facts, on the printed words of a book instead of the 
actual data of modern experience. None but technical 
Christians can build on their foundation. The Jew can- 
not, for he does not believe in Christ ; the Turk cannot ; 
the philosopher cannot ; the unbeliever of whatever class 
cannot ; humanity in its unchurched, unindoctrinated con- 
idtion cannot. The standard is peculiar ; the education is 
partial ; the training is exceptional and eccentric. It is 
only when we perceive how peculiar, partial, exceptional, 
and eccentric the whole aim and method are, that we un 
derstand the full force of objection to it. 

It seems to be forgotten that the Bible is an oriental 
book reflecting the mind of an oriental people. It seems 
to be forgotten that Jesus was an oriental, a child of the 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. H9 

East, partaking all the peculiarities that distinguished the 
eastern type of character. Now, the characteristics of the 
oriental ethics is passivity. As a people the orientals are 
tranquil, sedate, sometimes soft and yielding, sometimes 
inert, capable of fiery outbreaks of passion, but capable, 
too, of abject submission. The mild, monotonous climate, 
the productiveness of the soil, the languid effect of the 
atmosphere, the uneventfulness of daily existence, the ab- 
sence of stir and change in the general lot — all conspired 
to repress their energies, deaden their ambition, and to 
destroy the impulse as they did the necessity of struggle. 
Their government being usually despotic, granting no 
privileges, offering no prizes, guaranteeing no rights, en- 
couraging no liberties, exerted a depressing influence on 
their aims and purposes. They naturally became acqui- 
escent and content with little ; their expectations feeble, 
their hopes faint, their prospects of an improved condition 
small, they learned the easy lesson of resignation to the 
will of Providence, submission to the appointed lot. The 
vigorous virtues did not take root in their temperament ; 
the vehement desire for personal rights they knew nothing 
of; the aspiration for liberty, power, privilege, rarely 
visited their souls. The ethics of civilization, the moral 
rules of a progressive people, were unknown to them. 

The ethics of the New Testament are of this sad com- 
plexion. They are the ethics of poverty, weakness, sor- 
row. They are pitched on a low key, for joyless hearts. 
They are the ethics of sighing, complaint, and grief. The 
Beatitudes are pensive. They promise felicity to the 
miserable ; they exalt the timid and the acquiescent. 
Blessed are the poor in spirit ; Blessed are they that 
mourn ; Blessed are the meek ; Blessed are the merciful ; 
Blessed are the pure in heart ; Blessed are the peace- 
makers; Blessed are the reviled and persecuted. The re- 



120 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

ligion of Jesus has been called the religion of sorrow. He 
is the man of sorrows ; the meek and lowly ; the holy 
child ; the lamb. He invites the weary and heavy laden 
to his rest. He loves the humble, unambitious mind. His 
message is to the disappointed, the unprivileged ; the 
burden of the message is, that the Father is their friend. 

Special precepts and groups of precepts wear this same 
expression of gentle self-abnegation and patient submission 
to fortune. The disciple is admonished to surrender his 
personal rights and even yield uncomplainingly to wrong. 
" Agree with thine adversary quickly, while you walk to- 
gether, lest thine adversary deliver thee to the officer." 
Compromise is better than controversy. Yield anything 
rather than contend. " If any man sue thee at the law 
and take thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." " If a 
man (a government officer) insist on your going a mile in 
his service, go two." " Retaliate not on the injurer." 
" Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to 
him the other also." Whether absolute passiveness, entire 
non-resistance be meant or no, such passages discourage 
resentment, and forbid the exercise of the personal will. 
To be saintly is to surrender. 

The precepts in regard to property and its uses are mark- 
ed by the same spiritless tone. " Give to him that asketh 
of thee : and from him that would borrow of thee turn 
not thou away." " Go, sell what thou hast and give to the 
poor." " If ye lend to those from ye hope to receive, 
what merit is there ? " " Do good and lend, hoping for 
nothing again ; that your reward may be great." No 
mention at all of any rights in property ; no intimation 
that property may have its uses ; no hint that the making 
of money may be a necessity and even a duty. The des- 
titute are the people to be considered ; the privileged are 
the penniless. 



TEE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 121 

The rule of hospitality is made in favor of those who 
have nothing. " When thou makest a feast, call not thy 
friends and rich neighbors, lest they invite thee in turn, 
and a recompense be made ; but call the poor, the lame, 
the maimed, and the blind." The cardinal principle is, 
the mortification of taste, the renunciation of grace, cul- 
ture, refinement, the postponement of all social considera- 
tions to the single consideration of making the poor happy. 

The one quality eulogized, commended, enjoined, urged 
without qualification or stint, is the quality of loving- 
kindness. You are sure to be in the right way if you 
love enough. Ask no questions; make no comments; 
offer no criticisms ; find no fault ; administer no rebuke ; 
plead no excuses ; but open hand and heart to all comers, 
whosoever they may be. Love will justify itself. This 
is the strain all through. Nowhere will you find, similar 
commendations of equity, veracity, personal honor, or 
loyalty. We do not hear from the lips of Jesus the stern 
bidding to tell the truth, to do justice, to be faithful to the 
work of the hour. He addresses no admonitions to the 
weak, the miserable, the dejected. Where does he bid 
the poor to be industrious, provident, thrifty, or self-re- 
specting ? Where does he make a point of rousing the 
wretched to endeavor, or shaming the dependent out of 
their idleness or despair ? Whom does he ever summon 
to an assertion of rights ? Whom does he ever except 
from the categories of compassion ? 

The ethics of the New Testament are very beautiful ; 
the character of Jesus is exceedingly lovely ; the air of 
heaven breathes around him ; his thoughts are celestial ; 
his words drop from his mouth like gems. We read his 
delicious rhapsodies with unwearied pleasure ; they feed 
the heart's craving for blessed dreams ; they are the 
ethics of the millennium ; the moral laws of a redeemed 

6 



122 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER 

humanity. They will work admirably when men and 
women shall be men and women no longer ; when passion 
shall be purified and conscience shall be king ; when in- 
terests shall no more seem to clash, and relatione shall no 
more be a jangle, and jealousies and- hates shall be extin- 
guished, and the long struggle with fortune shall be ended, 
and we shall all feel like little children in a brighter and 
nobler Eden. 

But this charming code meets with a harsh reception 
from the temper of our Western world. The modern 
man finds it quite unfit for a working existence, and 
while he pays it a sentimental homage on Sundays, on 
the other days of the week he scarcely recognizes its ex- 
istence, never its authority. He blesses the peacemakers 
in church, and the next day takes a contract for supplying 
arms to a State at war. He hears from the preacher the 
touching praises of beneficence, and turns a deaf ear to the 
beggar's cry in the street. He assents to the lessons of 
brotherly love towards enemies and persecutors, and goes 
away to commence a long and costly suit for slander, or 
to expose to disgrace some person who has unintentionally, 
perhaps, insulted him. 

The modern man stands for rights. Rights first, duties 
afterward, is his maxim. His life is a struggle for power, 
place, privilege, often for bare subsistence. He must make 
good his title to labor, to enjoy and use the fruits of his 
labor, to develop his capacity, to exercise his talent, to 
throw his influence where it will tell to most advantage. 
He is responsible for many things ; for social morality, for 
the character of the laws, the spirit and form of institu- 
tions, the administration of government. His character- 
istic is energy. Every strenuous quality is greeted with 
praise. The passive virtues fall into disfavor. Patience 
is misunderstood ; contentment is disapproved of ; acqui- 



THE GOSPEL OF CHABACTER. 123 

escence in the established order is rebuked ; pusillanimity is 
despised ; humility is, to say the least, not revered ; meek- 
ness has a bad name ; resignation is tolerated only in 
circumstances of despair. The rule is to submit to noth- 
ing vexatious, distressing, oppressive, or unjust, but to 
resist, while strength lasts, the encroachments of evil or 
mischievous men, of government officials, of legal pressure, 
of adverse circumstances. Self-assertion becomes at times 
a sacred duty. Even women must compel themselves to 
face difficulty, grapple with hardship, resent imposition, 
repel injustice, and, in the endeavor to obtain what is 
necessary to their culture and usefulness, assume the disa- 
greeable attitude of claimants and contestants. In the 
sharp battle for moral existence, even good, kindly, 
amiable, humane, delicate people must be perpetually on 
the alert to seize opportunities and secure dues. On no 
other conditions can modern society exist or modern civil- 
ization be carried on. 

We do not pretend to obey the precepts of the 
Sermon on the Mount. It does not occur to us to imitate 
the example of Jesus in his passive submission to wrong. 
Who thinks it right or prudent to allow himself to be im- 
posed upon by indolent or insolent people % Who acts on 
the principle of compromising issues at any cost ? Who, 
as a simple matter of wisdom or caution, turns the other 
cheek to the smiter ? Who, however unrevengef ul, plac- 
able or generous, deems it best to inflict no harm on the 
wrong doers, to let criminals escape justice, to allow the 
enemies of society to go unpunished % The spirit in our 
age is willing and more than willing to take the element 
of vengeance out of the criminal code, but it would erect 
new moral safeguards against the encroachments of evil. 

The New Testament law respecting property is, if 
possible, still more uncongenial with the modern age. 



124 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

Property has its rights as well as its duties ; and its duties 
have regard to the stability and progress of civilization. 
It is the great instrument in redeeming nature, multiplying 
arts, projecting inventions. It is too precious to be mis- 
used or given away or squandered on incompetent people. 
Were it held a sacred duty on the part of good men to 
" put their property in such controllable shape as to make it 
available for benevolent ends," all the arrangements of the 
business world would have to be altered in order that it 
might be discharged. Tools to those who can use them, 
is our motto. Monev to those who have the intelligence 
to employ it best, to the men of talent and genius, the dis- 
coverers, builders, benefactors of the race. It were poor 
economy to give the hardly earned wealth of a community 
like ours to the incompetent and imbecile. It were put- 
ting ability, sagacity, experience, diligence, to a singular 
use, if the object of it all were to be the maintenance of 
the feeble, the stupid, the indolent, the unproductive. Let 
these by all means have their due share. But to treat 
them as if they were the sole objects of concern, would be 
to give them vastly more than their due share. The mis- 
chief done to all classes by this species of benevolence is 
well and bitterly known to all the world. If we sell our 
goods, we sell them in the best market to those who most 
want them and can best use them. The poor will derive 
benefit from the sale in greater opportunities and facility 
of living, in cheaper food and more lucrative industry. 
Increasing goods is better kindness than distributing goods. 
Civilization is a nobler benefactor than charity. 

The New Testament rule of hospitality would render 
cultivated society impossible, for cultivated society is the 
result of association of cultivated people with one another. 
An attempt to make such feasts as Jesus recommended, if 
successful, would lead society downward. But it could 



TEE GOSPEL OF CHABAOTER. 125 

not be successful. It would be a silly piece of formal 
affectation, like the pope's washing of the paupers' feet at 
Easter time in Rome. None but saints can exercise hos- 
pitality on .this gospel plan, and a rule that supposes 
saintliness in mankind at large is no rule for this world. 

The " law of Love," which is the foundation of the 
New Testament code of ethics, and the essential element 
in the evangelical stamp of character, is no where recog- 
nized as a working principle by the " Christian " people 
of the Western world. The word is charming ; the sen- 
timent is gracious ; the view is enchanting ; and if visions 
were principles, and feelings facts, and emotions laws, 
and sentiments rules of conduct, there would be no diffi- 
culty in reproducing in America the type of men and 
women that the East furnishes. But love is too soft a 
metal for practical needs. A great deal of alloy must be 
mingled with it in order that it may do the work of 
reform and regeneration. All sorts of strong qualities 
must go with it as guards and guides — knowledge, sagacity, 
tact, experience, prudence, wisdom, truth. Love does not 
always work well. None need to look more carefully 
about them than they who undertake to apply it to the 
sufferings, sorrows, and ills of men. Who shall say what 
love requires in any particular case ? the supplicant for it 
or the bestower of it ? they who feel the need or they 
who supply the need ? What objects is love designed to 
serve ? On what conditions is love to be administered ? 

We must knOw whom we are engaged with. The 
modern man asks questions : Who are you ? What are 
you ? Whence came you ? What have you done ? What 
can you do ? What do you mean to do ? It is not enough 
that you have suffered ; that you are in pain, want, or sor- 
row ; the question goes deeper : Are you good for any- 
thing ? Have you anything to build on ? What are you 



126 TEE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

capable of becoming ? What ground is there for believing 
that compassion, tenderness, patience, forgiveness, pity, 
will do you anything but harm ? 

The modern man, the best, the kindest man, asks these 
questions, prompted to ask them by his humanity ; by his 
anxious desire to do what he can to diminish suffering and 
relieve want, and reduce the amount of evil about him. 
Love is not searching enough, or clear enough, or quick- 
ening enough. The character that is based on love lacks 
the substance and cohesiveness which the exigency of life 
requires. 

This want of sympathy between the ethics of the JSTew 
Testament and the ethics of civilization amounts to a 
contradiction. Few persons pretend to carry the precepts 
of the Sermon on the Mount into their business or social 
relations. There are no practical Christians ; Jesus has 
few imitators. They who make a profession of copying 
him either go out of the world to do it, or satisfy them- 
selves with professing. The mischief of this state of 
things is appalling. Earnest, devout, conscientious men 
are driven out of the world. The rest, seeing how im- 
possible it is for them to conform to the ideal standard, 
abandon the effort, and fall into the practice of selfishness. 
The lowest interest becomes their law. They justify 
themselves in coarse manners and mean pursuits, and an 
inhuman spirit. 

No discipline of character is possible unless character 
be grounded on the facts of human nature, human expe- 
rience, and human necessities. The New Testament is a 
fact in literature ; not a fact in life. So little is known 
about Jesus as a man, living in personal relations with 
other men, and standing face to face with ordinary cir- 
cumstances, that his character can hardly be considered a 
fact in human history. He does not teach us as a person ; 



THE GOSPEL OF CHABACTEB. 127 

lie had no home, no child, no wife ; he was without a pro- 
fession or trade; was neither merchant, politician, jour- 
nalist, artist, artizan, or man of letters. His attributes 
are disembodied ; his sentiments are not organized. 

Character must rest on facts ; but a text is not a fact. 
Men must be taken as they are, not as they ought to be. 
We should dream of them as they ought to be, but we must 
train them on the ground where they live and labor. Be- 
fore there can be a scientific culture of character, that is, 
before there can be anv culture of character at all, before 
the qualities that compose character can be determined on 
and made imperative, there must be a knowledge, not of 
the JSTew Testament, but of the elements of personal 
nobleness, and of the issues at stake between man and 
man. 

The investigation of these vital data of character is a 
work, at present, of some difficulty, hampered as we are 
by such obstacles as I have described. But enough is 
known of them to justify us in announcing another prin- 
ciple in the place of that put forth in the New Testament. 
That principle is Justice. It is the pillar of noble char- 
acter, resting on primeval rock, the absolute truth. It may 
be. it will be, it must be, all that wisest love is. It is, in 
its nature, tender as tenderness, merciful as mercy, pitiful 
as pity, gentle as gentleness, loving as love. But it is all 
these because it is more than they all. It has no particu- 
lar regard for classes, for its regard takes in all classes. 
It does not enter on a special ministry to the poor, the 
weak, the afflicted ; for the rich, the strong, the joyous are 
equal objects of its care. It knows absolutely no distinc- 
tion of persons, no difference of conditions. It knows hu- 
man responsibility and duty alone. Its intention is not 
to soothe distress, but to embolden it ; not to support the 
poor, but to make them self-supporting ; not to feed the 



128 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

hungry, but to enable them to earn their own bread ; not 
to console sorrow, but to touch the recuperative energies 
that will avail to throw it off. Justice tones up the senti- 
ments, braces the will, and clears the intelligence, for it 
judges all by the same standard, and holds all to the same 
rule. It emancipates us from the sway of feeling, whose 
sentimental rule is so out of place in a world governed by 
eternal law. 

Justice is both masculine and feminine at once, and the 
practice of it is an education in manly and womanly quali- 
ties. The ancients painted her in the form of a woman, 
and endowed her with masculine virtues. There is a 
picture of Jesus in the Wilderness in quest of the lost 
sheep. The scene is a sandy waste, with an occasional bit 
of rock cropping out from the ground. There is no habi- 
tation, there is no forest, there is no shrubbery, save two 
or three angry-looking thorn bushes, in one of which a 
poor lamb is entangled. In the distance, the clouds of 
sand are sweeping along before the wind. In the fore- 
ground, the noon-day sun is driving its flaming sword into 
the earth. To this place Jesus has come, that he may 
save the sheep. His patient arm is outstretched, and 
his long, tender fingers penetrate the briars. The great 
compassionate eyes melt at sight of the suffering; the 
sorrowful, sympathetic face answers the pleading look of 
the torn animal. It is very touching, gracious, heavenly. 
It is the poetry of tender pity and sacrifice. But as we 
look at it, there seems to be a disproportion between 
means and ends, a lack of adaptation that takes away from 
the picture its artistic charm. All this, we are tempted 
to exclaim, for a sheep ? Could not the vast intellect that 
sits behind the broad brow, the immense kindness that 
looks out from the countenance, the prodigious force of 
will that is displayed in every line and feature, be better 



THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 129 

employed than thus ? To devise means of turning the 
wilderness into a cultivated field or a verdant meadow, on 
which innocent sheep might browse in peace, were a wiser 
and a more beneficent deed. Why should the fullness of 
the heart suspend the action of the brain % Why should 
excessive compassion push out of the way considerations 
of equity and economy ? Why should not all powers be 
exercised and all needs consulted ? 

Justice is guilty of no such error as this. We look at 
her image as set up by antiquity, and behold a woman's 
form, stately and graceful in bearing ; she stands erect and 
motionless, seeking none, because she is everywhere, in 
the wilderness and the city without going thither. Her 
right hand rests on the hilt of a sword, sharp at both 
edges, and of keen point, ready to smite transgressors in 
case of need. Her left hand holds on high the nicely bal- 
anced scales, that will weigh characters, actions, motives, 
with unswerving accuracy ; her eyes are bandaged, that 
she may not see who drops in the weight, whether it be 
prince or peasant, king or beggar, or what the weight is, 
whether a crime or a virtue ; she blinds herself to all dif- 
ferences in persons, but she herself is not blind ; she sees 
with the .inward eye the invisible principles of right and 
wrong, the impalpable laws of rectitude. These reveal 
themselves to her in the night. Though they be hidden 
in secret places she detects them. They disclose them- 
selves to her ; they come to her and drop into the scale 
their own condemnation or praise. She needs not to see 
what they put in, the scale is held high ; — the world sees 
and judges. 

This is the figure the new faith would set up in the 
highways and byways, as the image of the consoler and 
saviour. A tract was sent me last week, to one passage 
in which my particular attention was called. There it was 

6* 



130 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 

said that the minister's office was to save souls — not to 
preach eloquent sermons, or gather large congregations, or 
collect a large revenue, or get a large salary — but simply 
to save souls. The' silent imputation was, that I was 
doing all the naughty things aforesaid, and leaving the one 
indispensable thing undone. But if there be one accu- 
sation I feel justified in repelling, it is an accusation like 
this. Save souls, indeed ! From what, if not from false 
reliances and unsafe refuges, from delusions and senti- 
mentalising, from the power of phrases and the bondage 
of traditions, from hypocrisy and cant ? He does a good 
deed who saves a soul from insincerity, un veracity, hollo w- 
ness, pretence, and sham, and the gospel that saves from this 
seemingly bottomless hell is no gospel of Trinity, atone- 
ment, mediation, justification by a Redeemer's blood — it 
is the plain gospel of justice and veracity, the gospel of 
obedience to the natural laws, which are divine command- 
ments ; the gospel of mutual obligation, which is the gos- 
pel of eternal felicity. 



YIIL 
THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEAYEE. 

PT^HE subject of this discourse is the Scientific Aspect 
-■- of Prayer. The Bible doctrine of prayer — there is 
but one — is simple. It is fully declared in texts like 
these : " Ask, and it shall be given you ;" " All things 
whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive ;" 
" The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord 
shall raise him up ;" " If two of you shall agree on earth 
as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for 
them by my Father which is in heaven." There is no 
variety or qualification. Whatever the request, if proffered 
in faith by believers in Jehovah or disciples of the Christ, 
it is granted. The doctrine is borne out by frequent illus- 
trations. " Moses went out of the city of Pharaoh and 
spread abroad his hands unto the Lord, and the thunder 
and hail ceased, and the rain was not poured upon the 
earth." " The Hagarites and all that were with them 
were delivered into the hands of the Israelites, for they 
cried to God in the battle and he was entreated by them." 
" Elias prayed earnestly that it might not rain ; and it 
did not rain for the space of three years and six months ;" 
" And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, oh, that 
thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast and 
keep me from evil ; and God granted him that which he 
requested." The prayer of Elijah is reported to have 
brought fire from the Lord that consumed wood, and 
stones, and dust, and licked up water in a trench. The 



132 TEE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRAYER. 

prayer of Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. The 
prayer of the Church opened the doors of Peter's prison. 
According to the teaching of the Bible, prayer has re- 
ceived every possible form of answer. It has stayed pes 
tilence, abated famine, averted war, arrested the heavenly 
bodies, made iron float and water burn. 

Christendom adopts the belief of the Bible. The doc- 
trine of the Church in every period has been coincident 
with that of the Scriptures. The same belief is professed 
now by Romanists and Protestants. Theological books, 
and books of piety of both schools, abound in stories of 
literal answer to prayer. The rationalizing evangelist, 
Horace Bushnell, devotes a chapter of his work on " Na- 
ture and the Supernatural," to a discussion of this ques- 
tion, and adduces several instances of answer to prayer in 
the shape of recovered life and vigor. In England, a sect 
calling themselves "the peculiar people," are distinguished 
by their implicit faith in the wonder-Working power of 
prayer. They call in no physician to their sick and use 
none of the customary precautions against the effect of 
disease. When the sick die, as they frequently do, they 
regard the event as of divine appointment. Once or 
twice the law has interposed, and the " peculiar people " 
have been called to account by society for tampering thus 
with human life. Their defense has been the text from 
James, which they obeyed strictly, and against which, 
society, assuming the inspiration of the Word had nothing 
to say. The cases were dismissed by the Court of Justice. 
To the objection that instances of literal answer to prayers 
for rain, or health, or safety, or victory, or other outward 
boons, are infrequent now, it is replied that the infre- 
quency is due to the prevalent skepticism ; that prayers are 
not offered in faith ; that ours is an unbelieving age, ad- 
dicted to science and philosophy, which does not, will not, 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRATER. 133 

cannot fulfil the conditions on which answer to prayer is 
promised. Of course people who cannot heartily pray, 
have no right to complain that God gives them nothing. 
They who do heartily pray, may still hope to receive. 

To test the validity of the common belief, Professor 
Tyndall proposed this experiment. Let two hospital 
wards be selected, both equally light, airy, salubrious, both 
in general respects, equally well cared for. Let the one 
be set apart for patients who have faith in the healing 
power of prayer, and whose friends are in the habit of of- 
fering prayer in their behalf. In the other, let there be 
placed people who are not in the habit of praying or being 
prayed for, but who rely wholly on the natural means of 
recovery. Let the experiment be carefully watched for 
iive years. The result will show whether and how far 
prayer may be counted on as a remedial agent. It has 
been doubted whether Professor Tyndall was serious in 
the strange plan suggested. If he was not, Mr. Francis 
Galton, who seconded him, was. The public understood 
him seriously, and there is no good reason for thinking 
that the suggestion was made in other than perfectly good 
faith. Mr. Tyndall is a delicately organized man of sen- 
sitive feeling, of imaginative poetic mind, tender and rev- 
erent. He is the furthest possible from a Materialist ; 
rather he is an opponent of Materialism ; an idealist of a 
fine intellectual type, a reader of Emerson, and to some 
extent, of kindred spirit with him. His desire was to es- 
tablish a fact, nothing more. This is a very important 
matter. If the popular doctrine is justified by experience, 
it is well that all men should know it, the sick and the 
well, patients and physicians, infidels and believers. If, 
on the other hand the popular doctrine will not stand the 
test of scientific examination, then equally important re- 
sults will follow in another direction. Mr. Tyndall prob- 



134 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PBA YEB. 

ably anticipated no objections to his plan from either 
quarter ; none from the unbelievers, who would doubtless 
hail such a trial with joy as establishing their faith in the 
unvarying constancy of nature's law ; none from the be- 
lievers, who would leap to the proof that would in their 
judgment surely confound the infidel. In a cause so mo- 
mentous as this, why should not the Lord of the Church 
make some startling disclosure of his power, as in the days 
of old when the prophets demanded and received a sign ? 
The reception of the proposal was not cordial. The 
men of science greeted it warmly ; the unbelievers pro- 
fessed their sense of its fairness, and their readiness to 
abide by it ; but from the opposite party clamors arose. 
Some pronounced the plan impious, some impertinent, 
some heartless, some idle and chimerical ; some declared 
it a trick on the part of the infidels, a cunning trap laid 
to bring ridicule on faith. But among the multitude of 
objections three were valid and unanswerable. It was 
argued that the experiment would be fruitless of result, 
because " prayers are not mere utterances in the vocative 
case of which any specimen is as good as another, but vary 
in proportion to the depth of intensity of the life thrown 
into them, so that the very kind of prayers by which Mr. 
Tyndall would test his case, the formulated prayers for 
classes of persons, are probably those which partake least 
of the spiritual essence of prayer." This is well put ; 
prayers aimed at a mark, diplomatic prayers, said for a 
purpose— prayers of business, as it were, do not fall with- 
in the category of availing petitions. Again, it was urged 
that the primary condition of all prayer is submission to 
the divine will. The prayer might be refused, not because 
God could not answer it, but because He did not see fit, 
in His love and wisdom, to answer it ; so that the failure 
of the experiment would establish nothing as to the va- 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP. 135 

lidity or invalidity of the prayer. Another weighty and 
solid objection ; there is a third party to be consulted — 
God. In order to render the experiment successful, must 
not His disposition towards it be ascertained % And who 
was to obtain that information % If prayer was a me- 
chanical contrivance that worked like a lever or pulley ; 
if every earnest intense petitioner were sure of an an- 
swer ; if there were no reservations on the part of the 
Father of Creation, the issue might be accepted by both 
sides, with confidence. But the possibility of such reser- 
vation takes all pith out of the negative proof. Again, it 
was suggested, and fairly too, that the experiment to be 
successful must conform to conditions of quite impossible 
delicacy. Suppose that the patients in the praying ward, 
did show a general advantage over the others in respect of 
the quickness or completeness of their recovery ; it would 
still remain to be determined how much of this effect was 
due to prayer, and how much to other agencies, strength 
of constitution, subtle peculiarities in the disease, the na- 
tural enhancement and exhilaration of the animal spirits 
under the excitement of hope and faith, the increased in- 
fluence of the mind over the body, which enthusiasm and 
fanaticism produce. Our instruments are not yet fine 
enough to detect the hidden causes that conspire to build 
up or to pull down the human frame. The science of sta- 
tistics is as yet in its infancy. It deals with blunt facts 
and crude averages. The only valid induction in a mat- 
ter like this, must be based on facts collected in fields in- 
accessible, sifted by methods thus far undiscovered, and 
collated by a system far more comprehensive than any yet 
devised. Statistics cannot penetrate the spiritual region 
of prayer, or define the precise efficacy of prayer, or trace 
the shadowy boundaries of the mind, or tell what powers 
hitherto deemed supernatural are stored up within its 



136 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TER. 

lines. In a word, the experiment proposed cannot be con- 
ducted to the satisfaction of either party interested. If 
no answer came to the supplications of the sufferers or 
their friends, the believers in prayer would allege the 
want of earnestness in the petitioners, the unwillingness 
of the Lord to enter into the plan, or incompatibility with 
the divine love and wisdom. If, on the other hand, an 
answer came, the unbeliever in prayer would have a right 
to say that the result was brought about by other than 
supernatural causes. Unless every earnest prayer is likely 
to be answered, prayer cannot be adopted by physicians 
in the regular treatment of disease. Unless every earnest 
prayer be flatly refused, the priests of religion will urge 
people to seek refuge during seasons of trouble in super- 
natural help. 

Professor TyndalPs suggestion, therefore, is not likely 
to be adopted. It has been valuable, however, as creating 
discussion, and as opening once more in a practical man- 
ner, a question of the deepest spiritual and temporal 
moment, a mere enumeration of the bearings whereof on 
human affairs would occupy the full time allowed for a 
discourse. 

The real question at issue is this : Is God, or is He not, 
an individual sentient being, a maker, ruler, administra- 
tor, in the ordinary sense of these words ? If He is, the 
discussion about prayer is at an end. Prayer is entirely 
admissible under that supposition. No one doubted the 
literal efficacy of prayer before this belief in the individ- 
ual creating, ruling, guiding God was doubted. Conceive 
of God as an individual being, thinking, forecasting, pro- 
posing, planning, governing as the Czar governs Russia, 
superintending as an engineer superintends the machinery 
of a steamship, or a president the concerns of a railroad 
company, directing as Yon Moltke directed the movements 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TEB. 137 

of the German army from Berlin, evolving and working 
out plans as He goes on, holding nations in His hand as 
the first Napoleon held cabinets and major-generals, feel- 
ing personal satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the doings 
of human creatures ; conceive of God thus, and there is 
no difiiculty in accepting without the least reserve the 
popular theory of prayer. The whole doctrine follows, 
for such a being, sitting apart in the focus of the world's 
whispering gallery, where the faintest sigh reaches His ear, 
with His hand on the springs that set in motion the enor- 
mous machinery of His creation, and effect in obedience 
to His will all the possible combinations of force, sending 
electric thrills along the throbbing nerves of law, bring- 
ing the currents of power to bear on the most sensitive 
points, and at His discretion starting fresh centres of 
energy into life — such a being, I say, omniscient, omnipo- 
tent, playing on His universe as a master in music plays 
on his organ, could, without straining a cord or starting a 
rivet, snapping a fibre or tangling a thread, respond to the 
special needs of His children and meet their requests. 
Why should He not give literal answers to prayers for 
external things ? Why should he not answer prayers for 
life, success, prosperity, victory, health, and wealth % Not 
all prayers, for that would be inconsistent with a wise 
order in the regulation of the world, and with consider- 
ate kindness towards people who pray ignorantly and to 
their hurt ; not idle, petulant, or passionate prayers, for 
they are not entitled to respect ; not the conflicting prayers 
of men who clamor for opposite things; not the short- 
sighted, selfish prayers of men who want to engage the 
heavenly powers in the interest of their petty schemes for 
place or gain ; but such prayers as voice a human and gene- 
ral need. Such a being might, for instance, refuse peti- 
tions for rain hundreds, nay, thousands of times, because 



138 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YER 

He could not grant to one what would injure another ; 
but can we not imagine a contingency, a case of very pro- 
tracted and general drought, when, under heavens of brass, 
on an earth of ashes, men pined and nature fainted, a 
time when every throbbing brain and every panting heart 
and every thirsty soul cried out with one great burst of 
agonized accord for rain, rain, till the multitudinous wishes 
made the spiritual air quiver ; a time when every living 
and dying thing should call for one boon ? And why 
should not such a prayer be respected % Why should not 
the atmospheric conditions be supplied and the laws of 
nature be silently shifted for nature's benefit ? 

Or can we not imagine a state of war between two sec- 
tions or nations, the issue of which involves the gravest con- 
cerns of human civilization, the emancipation, we will say, 
of a whole race, or the overthrow of some dark barbaric 
despotism, or the destruction of an empire founded on fraud 
and violence, sustained by chicanery, sensual in its dispo- 
sition, and demoralizing in its influence % Can we not 
imagine such a state, as would render natural and proper 
the interposition of the world's ruler, in response to such 
eager solicitation from the nobler combatants as proved 
that they were heart and soul enlisted in the cause of hu- 
manity, and were altogether worthy to be entrusted with 
civilization's holiest interests ? 

Or again, can we not imagine such a God as I have de- 
scribed, and as Christendom believes in, arranging the 
sanitary agencies with a view to the special benefit of 
some precious person whose life or safety is unspeakably 
dear to society ? Can we not think of Him as sending His 
messengers, air and light, to exhilarate the nervous system, 
quicken the flow of blood, and all in answer to the intense 
wish of many who feel that in that life their own deepest 
interests are bound up ? Such a thing might occur but 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YER. 1 39 

seldom ; but it might occur, and its occurrence would fur- 
nish ground for such interposition as the Christian world 
expects in answer to fervent, unselfish prayer. Thus we 
should concede at once the whole case, and accept with- 
out cavil the arguments of theologians, the testimony of 
pious men and women, the solemn averments of those 
who declare that within their own experience prayers have 
been answered. And why not? Why not consent to 
allow the controlling force of prayer as an agency in the 
administration of human affairs — an agency not to be con- 
fidently reckoned on for special occasions, not an organ- 
ized agency, but still an agency on which men in solemn 
emergencies may rely ? 

Because, I reply, the conception of God, on which the 
whole theory hangs, is one that it is becoming more and 
more difficult to hold against the assaults of ripening 
knowledge and maturing thought. Men, who, as was the 
case of the Bible folks, knew nothing whatever of the 
world they lived in, had no proper method of investigation, 
never heard of a natural law, never traced the relation of 
cause and effect to the most inconsiderable distance, never 
traveled, never studied, never explored, held the crudest, the 
most child-like beliefs in regard to the commonest pheno- 
mena of the natural world, were absolutely without what 
we call science or knowledge of anything in heaven or 
earth, could easily imagine to themselves a huge being like 
a man, presiding over the world of matter and of mind. 
As men become acquainted with their globe, with its his- 
tory, its formation, its elements, to imagine such a being as 
ruling over it day by day, forming its floods, scooping out 
its sea basins, balancing its continents, mingling its tribes, 
administering the economies of its animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, working, as by secret wires, the endless com- 
plexities of its organization, holding its myriad parts 



140 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YEB. 

together and giving a distinct thought to each, becomes 
exceedingly difficult — so difficult, indeed, that they who 
apprehend the problem profess themselves unable to form 
any clear image of the divine mind. The planet we live 
on is so full of fibres, its parts are so intertwined, inter- 
linked, interlaced, its elements cross and mingle in such 
intricate webs, that there is no posterior door or crack by 
which a foreign will can enter. It is already a compact 
creation of mind — a perfect flower of intelligence. ' 

But we are still on the threshold of our difficulty. This 
planet is but a speck in the solar system, which is still in- 
cluded in the same network of law that holds the globe 
together. And, beyond the solar system, other systems 
unfold their blazing sheets of glory, till human calculation 
despairs of conjecturing their limits ; and all these systems 
roll and revolve in obedience to the same rules of order and 
harmony that preside over the dance of the autumn leaves, 
when the wind strips them from the trees and whirls them 
abroad. The conception of the individual God becomes 
now absolutely impossible. All our ideas of mind are con- 
founded. What sort of intelligence is it that can think in 
an instant and at once all these myriads of myriads of 
thoughts, and then has myriads on myriads of thoughts to 
spare ? What sort of intelligence is it that, having organ- 
ized itself in perfect worlds and systems of worlds without 
number, is able to give special care to every particle, to 
supplement its own complete expression, to improve its 
own finished work, to mend, modify, alter, recombine, re- 
adjust its own wonderful combinations ? What sort of an 
intelligence that, having packed a thousand universes with 
living purposes, has still more exact and living purposes in 
store ; having given every conceivable and inconceivable 
expression to its beneficent intention, has yet whole reser- 
voirs of intention that have* not yet been drawn upon ? 



TEE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TEE. 141 

But even yet we have not reached the bottom of the 
abyss of perplexity. For we find that every point of the 
mental and moral universe is pervaded by compact laws of 
its own, and is possessed of inveterate habits; is, as it 
were, a woven web of will, a seamless coat of purpose. 
Every inch of ground as far as we can fancy, as far as we 
can dream, as far as we can fling our most audacious con- 
jecture, is filled and preoccupied, crammed with cause and 
effect, antecedents and consequents, filled till the most 
ethereal ether is a tissue of gauzy life — a film of feeling so 
thin that you cannot seize it, so tough that you cannot tear 
it. The very Fullness is full ! The pleroma overflows ! 
What becomes now of the Hebrew Jehovah, of the Chris- 
tian Father in heaven % Unless this palpitating universe 
be He, He is past finding out. 

Clearly no prayers can be expected to extract another 
wish or thought or expression of feeling from a Being who 
is beyond all these lines, and who has put these thrilling 
worlds between Himself and His creatures, piled these Os- 
sas on these Pelions of intention, and fairly exhausted the 
possibilities of care in what is already provided. He who 
begins to see how much he has, cannot in conscience ask 
for more. To have the smallest appreciation of the 
wealth of the supply is to see reason sufficient for being 
dumb. 

And so we find what we should expect to find, a decline 
of prayer with an increase of knowledge. As people un- 
derstand meteorology and climatology, they perceive the 
uselessness of prayer for rain. As they understand the 
strict connection between the harvest and the seasons, they 
cease to pray for good crops. As they understand the inti- 
mate dependence of human health on sanitary precautions, 
they abate the fervency of their petitions for long and 
wholesome life. As they understand the necessary affili- 



142 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PR A YEB. 

ation of the physiological and the psychological laws, their 
prayers for an amiable temper and a kind heart become 
weak and infrequent. 

A visit to the office in Washington, where the clerk of 
the weather sits with his subordinates about him, catching 
the whispers of the wind from the four quarters of the 
heaven, counting the rain-drops that fall on a continent, 
weighing the atmosphere from sea to sea and from lake to 
gulf, and making these flying, illusive witnesses tell whether 
it will be wise for people in New York or San Francisco 
to take umbrellas down town with them the next day, will 
satisfy the most devout mind that supplication for a sud- 
den supply or cessation of showers will be ineffectual. 

A visit to the Bureau of Yital Statistics, where the cur- 
rents of disease are traced in their flow over large reaches 
of territory, and the private correspondence between sanity 
and sewerage, death and dirt, fever and fetor, cholera and 
uncleanliness, is established with the nicety of mathemat- 
ics, will convince the saint that the death-rate is not likely 
to be modified considerably by the most fervent utterance 
of desire Godward. 

The prayer for fresh accessions of temperance, honesty, 
peacefulness, sinks into silence before the fact that vices 
and crimes too obey their laws; that outbreaks of. moral 
distemper accompany changes in the money market ; that 
social morality follows the line of national prosperity 
which rises and falls with the fluctuations of the seasons ; 
that social disorders have their method ; that sins can be 
reduced to an average ; that a skilful actuary will, from 
given data, compute with much accuracy the probable 
number of murders and suicides for the next twelvemonth, 
vice and virtue not being gifts dependent on the favor of a 
benefactor, but qualities wrought into the texture of the 
world, to be had by fulfilling the conditions, not otherwise. 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP. 143 

The Bible encourages prayer for faith. But we all know 
that infidelity, like vice, has its causes, which must be re- 
moved before it will disappear. The " Age of Reason " 
in France, with its appalling excesses, was no inspiration 
of the devil, but an inevitable result of the abominations 
of the Church, which were again an inevitable result of the 
abominations of the State, which again were an inevitable 
result of an ancient but outworn theory of the rights of 
kings. 

Prayer is thus seen to be out of place, because every 
possible effect of prayer is guaranteed without it. Prayer 
is inoperative, because it is unnecessary. For every prayer 
that reasonable mortals can make an answer is already pro- 
vided ; answers to prayer being worked into the substance 
of life. The compact universe, in fact, is an organized 
response to the supplications of men ; an inexhaustible store- 
house of adaptations, the key whereof is placed in every 
creature's hand. The perfect being could not reply to 
human beseeching more sufficiently than He has done 
already. He has even anticipated petition, knowing what 
things His children had need of before they asked Him, 
and furnishing them centuries long in advance, with every 
imaginable means of satisfaction. They fancy their peti- 
tions are answered directly by Him when they draw on 
some hitherto undiscovered treasury, that had always lain 
hidden at their feet ; they fancy that He has just begun 
to speak because they have just begun to listen. 

Does this view of the question seem chilling and repul- 
sive ? Then let me, in conclusion, add a few words that 
may help to remove or correct such an impression. ~No 
long argument is required to show that the view taken of 
prayer and the God of prayer is really more conducive to 
mental and moral health than the popular view which it 
displaces. 



144 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OR PRA TEE. 

I. In regard to the material condition of mankind. 
This depends, all will allow, mainly, if not wholly, on 
human effort. An indolent society will never be a pros- 
perous one ; no estate was ever improved by heedlessness 
or neglect. Progress in material respects keeps pace with 
energy, knowledge, purpose, and these increase with the 
necessity for them. To augment these qualities, therefore, 
to stimulate the physical, mental and moral activities to 
their full normal pitch, is a matter of prime importance 
to civilization. The truth is forced on us by all observa- 
tion, that the first requisite of improvement is a convic- 
tion that man is master of his fate. If he wants a fort he 
must build a fort. Every social problem brings this truth 
home to us. It is the incessant cry of merchant, financier, 
politician, reformer, that matters will be no better till 
men take the trouble to make them better. Like Cortez, 
we must burn our vessels behind us, and so shut ourselves 
up with our work, if we expect to be conquerors. 

Now, which belief is most stimulating to activity; the 
belief that God will answer our prayers, or that we must 
answer them ourselves? A broad survey of the expe- 
rience of mankind scarcely leaves room to doubt that the 
latter faith is the more quickening. Earnest individuals 
no doubt, feel that their mental and moral energies are 
quickened and exalted by prayer. But the experience of 
earnest individuals is not in point here. We are consider- 
ing the effect of the belief in prayer on the great masses 
of mankind ; and observing these it is evident that people 
are only too willing to let another do their work, and 
when that other is the omnipotent God, the complacency 
with which they will drop their tools is quite intelligible. 
If in great exigencies, prayer will serve instead of labor, 
great exigencies will not be provided for, and there will 
be the most inadequate equipment for the most mom en- 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP. 145 

tons crises. What would become of medicine if prayer 
could be relied on to heal the sick ? Where would be the 
Boards of Health if prayer could baffle infectious diseases ? 
Would Social Science have the faintest chance if prayer 
could alleviate pauperism, promote co-operation, or dimin- 
ish crime % Should we ever make improvements in naval 
architecture if prayer would protect us from the perils of the 
deep ? Or keep night watches in behalf of virtue, if prayer 
would recover the Magdalene, arrest the burglar, or quench 
the incendiary's spark % Nothing endeavor, nothing have, 
is the rule of life. For all we get we must pay full price 
in toil, thought, and care. Our whole power of wishing must 
go into eyes and ears and finger ends ; not an emotion must 
run to waste. When we see people praying against 
potato rot and cattle plague, yellow fever and cholera, 
with their lips instead of their brains, we see an example 
of that woful misapplication of means to ends, by which 
the vast misery of the world is accounted for. When we 
hear them praying against unbelief, infidelity, indifference, 
worldliness, instead of combating them with knowledge, 
we see plainly enough why such things prevail. Let men 
be satisfied to accept the answers already given to those 
who will take the trouble to look for them in the proper 
place, and they will be found sufficient. 

Civilization, with all its accompaniments, is found to 
have kept even pace with the decline of prayer ; not with 
the decline of earnestness, ambition, aspiration, longing 
after higher and better things, hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, but of prayer, which provides what the 
uneducated suppose, and will always suppose, to be a 
special dispensation from these purely human qualifica- 
tions. I am aware that this statement will be gravely 
questioned ; but it will appear I am persuaded on examina- 
tion, that they who question it are not, as a class, eminent 

7 



146 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YER. 

promoters of civilization, or hearty friends of it. They 
are mainly churchmen, who, if they have an ideal of 
society in the proper sense of the term, borrow it from 
the book of Daniel or the Apocalypse. For the estab- 
lishment of their " kingdom of heaven " they naturally 
look to prayer, no other sources furnishing the needed 
supply of power. What they desire and anticipate must 
come supernaturally, if at all, and their faith in the super- 
natural will of course correspond to the eagerness of their 
desire. But they who desire a better physical and social 
state will find the materials for it not in the outlying 
spaces of possibility beyond the organized universe, but in 
the organized universe itself, and in themselves as the 
crowning portion of it. 

II. But this belief, it is urged, falls coldly on the heart ; 
it chills feeling ; it freezes emotion ; the spiritual nature 
cannot inhale this rarefied air, but, abandoned in a wilder- 
ness of uses, it gasps and dies. Not, I think, when the 
view of the truth is clear. What the mind needs is bal- 
ance, poise, serenity, the sense of rest in infinite powers, 
of repose on divine realities. It is the highest office of 
prayer to console and trantmilize the mind so that its waves 
of passion will subside on the bosom of the eternal deep. 

The eternal deep is the necessity, not the voice from it. 
And the eternal deep is not abolished. It is there still, 
where it was, and more crowded than ever with living 
forms. Devout persons say : we must have a God to fly 
to. But is it not as well to have a God who may be reach- 
ed without flying — who besets us behind and before in 
life's inexorable conditions, who lays His hand upon us 
every moment in some nice adaptation to our mortal ne- 
cessities, whose sensorium is the universe itself ? 

An unutterable peace steals over the spirit as one sit- 
ting on a rock gazes out on the ocean, listens to the prattle 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA TEE. 147 

of the sunny wavelets on the beach, to the mellow chant 
of the breakers on the cliffs, watches the night of the sea- 
birds, the silent passing to and fro of ships, the streaks of 
color on the surface of the expanse, the patient rising and 
falling of the tide. To look down from a green slope upon 
a wide landscape with houses and cattle and the varied 
farm-life is composing to the feelings. A deep, strange, 
undefinable sense of quiet comes from the feeling of sym- 
pathy with such spacious realms of life, the mingled silence 
and noise, the combination of complete solitude with a 
vast and active fellowship. We are not addressed, yet a 
hundred voices seem to be speaking to us. We say nothing, 
yet are holding inaudible converse with something behind 
the winged creatures, and the four-footed cattle, and the 
toiling men. There is an interchange of sentiment. Our 
petulance and conceit flow out, the vast peace of the whole 
steals in ; we are comforted unawares, and with calmer 
spirit retnrn to our duty. 

Could we, in the same way, from the hill-top of medita- 
tion, or the slope of reverie, look out on the world of 
divine order and harmony, put ourselves in loving com- 
munication with the perfect system of which we form a 
part, feast on its beauty, admire its grandeur, wonder at 
its immensity, gather about us thoughts of its beneficence, 
brace ourselves against its immovable pillars of law, the 
same effects would ensue, though in much higher de- 
gree — calmness and strength would take possession of the 
breast ; there would be no prayer, for the answer would 
come before the prayer was offered ; the stroke of cala- 
mity would be prevented from crushing, the cloud would 
pass away from the spirit, suffering would lose its sting, 
sorrow its dumb pain, the will would recover its compo- 
sure, conscience its serenity, the lurking shapes of fear and 
sin would vanish. 



148 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP. 

It is quite possible so to cultivate the habit of medita- 
tion that communion with these grand thoughts will be 
verily communion with intellectual being — sentiment will 
answer sentiment, feeling will respond to feeling, the soul 
of order and harmony will melt into the soul of their 
worshipper ; there will be patience in the slowly-unfold- 
ing processes, pity in the gentle forbearing powers, pardon- 
ing mercy in the beneficent forces that hide ugliness and 
evil away ; longing is met and aspiration is encouraged, and 
faith reposes trustfully on the bosom of an enworlded 
deity. Everything that prayer gives to the pure devotee, 
this rapt contemplation gives to the worshipper. He is 
made partaker of creation's inmost life. His heart is in 
unison with the universal heart. 

All prayer resolves itself into one petition : Thy will be 
done ! They who discover and acknowledge that the world 
they live in is the complete embodiment of the perfect 
will, are they who most habitually and feelingly offer that 
pure petition ; — theirs is the living piety, for theirs is the 
living God, and the living communion with Him. 



IX. 

THE NAKED TETJTH. 

TAKE as a text this morning some remarkable 
-■- words of Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. 
Speaking of the spiritual man, he says : " For we know 
that if our fleshly tabernacle were dissolved we have a 
divine structure, a house not made with hands, eternal, 
heavenly. Earnestly we desire to be clothed upon with 
our heavenly frame, so that being thus clothed we shall 
not be found naked ; we would not be unclothed but 
clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up in 
life." 

There is a common phrase taken originally from Shakes- 
peare — the "Naked Truth." It is used as descriptive of 
the simple, pure, unadulterated truth, the final absolute 
truth. The method of arriving at it is to strip off what 
are called its disguises, whether foul or fair, and get as 
near as possible to the bare skeleton of literal fact. Analy- 
sis is the method ; the scalpel is the instrument. The 
same rule applied to ordinary every-day knowledge would 
lead to odd results. What if one were to seek the naked 
truth respecting an apple-tree by digging down into its 
roots, or of an oak by pulling to pieces an acorn ! Suppose 
that to discover the naked truth respecting a harvest-field, 
a man of science, instead of visiting the barns where the 
product is stored, were to pull up the stubble and dissect 
the underground fibres ! To learn the truth about a grape- 



150 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

vine, we weigh its clusters and taste their juice ; to learn 
the truth about an orangery, we count and suck the 
oranges. We speak of the " naked eye." The naked eye 
is the eye unaided by artificial lenses, the eye unassisted 
by telescope or microscope, the natural eye. But have 
not these fine instruments by which the power of the eye 
is augmented become a part of it ? Do they not invest or 
clothe the organ with new attributes ? Do these instru- 
ments impoverish the eye or enrich it ? Is vision increased 
by them or diminished ? Certainly it is increased ; these 
contrivances supplement the organ, make it more sensitive 
to the sunbeam, enable it to comply more fully with the 
laws of light. Fancy the telescope and microscope abol- 
ished, and none but "naked" eyes left to mankind, 
should we be nearer the truth about the eye than we are 
at present? Would the disappearance of astronomy on 
the one hand and of physiology on the other, the vanish- 
ing of the infinitely great and of the infinitely little, add 
to our knowledge of the laws of vision ? The natural 
organ is the basis on which the noble science of optics 
builds. It is most truly itself when it is clothed upon by 
its heavenly house. 

Nature abhors the naked truth and always clothes it 
when she can. She loves the garment of tender verdure, 
the investiture of roses and lilies, the splendor of forests. 
She is fond of presenting herself in state. Where will 
you find an unclothed rock or stone ? Not in forest or 
field ; perhaps in some wilderness of sand, as in Africa or 
Arabia, where the winds blow the seeds of verdure away, 
or the scorching sunbeams dry them up. Travellers across 
our continent describe rocks cut and polished by wind and 
sand, on whose smooth surfaces the most tenacious plant 
has no chance to maintain its hold. But wherever else 
you find a stone, large or small, it is covered with the fine 



THE NAKED TRUTH. 151 

lace-work of the lichen, which is the beginning of vege- 
tation, so fine that only keen eyes can see its tracery ; atop 
of this is laid the soft mantle of moss, tender and green, 
with its pretty flowers and its wonderful imitations of 
forest growths ; as if this were not enongh, thick layers of 
soil are added, a still richer clothing for the skeleton ; 
shrubbery of many kinds makes the concealment more ef- 
fectual still, and at last the pine, the ash, and the oak, 
glorify the whole. The whole is nature's product, and as 
a whole it must be studied. To learn the naked truth 
about the rock that serves as a base to the forest or the 
grain-field, this magnificent mass of integument must be 
taken off, the unclothed stone must be disclosed ; but. to 
learn the full truth about the region, every stage of natural 
growth must be noted. Nature is impatient of naked- 
ness. A great writer standing before a nude statue in the 
workshop of a modern sculptor in Rome, expresses the 
opinion that the day of such work is gone by. It was well 
enough for the Greeks to make nude statues of men and 
women, calling them gods and goddesses ; the ancient men 
of Greece wore little drapery, lived much in the open air, 
and were frequently, in the gymnasium or at the public 
games, stripped of their garments. But the modern man 
is always clothed : his clothes are part of himself ; he is 
known by his clothes ; they express his sense of beauty, 
fitness, propriety ; they convey his individuality ; they 
present him ; we do not know him without them. The 
great painters made much account of the costume of their 
subjects, the satin, velvet, fur, even the jewels in ring and 
brooch which were sparkles from the inward character. 
To learn the naked truth about a man, one would hardly 
think it wise to wait till he was dead, and we could obtain 
his skeleton ; one might wait till he was dead, but in order 
to get as far away from the skeleton as possible, in order 



152 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

to gather up all that had grown about the man in the 
course of his life, and so to bring out the full personality, 
the accumulated results of a lifetime are important as ex- 
hibitions of character. The exterior clothes the interior. 

The point I aim at establishing is this : The naked truth 
is not the pure truth, but the rudimental truth. Mr. Dar- 
win undertakes to prove that the progenitor of man was 
the ape. Let us concede the sufficiency of his proof. That, 
let us admit, is the naked truth respecting the animal we 
call man. There was a time when his ancestors possessed 
caudal extremities and perched in trees, travelling over 
the ground when they had occasion, with bodies prone, 
and grubbing roots out of the soil. But that was, accord- 
ing to Mr. Darwin, many thousands of years ago. To get 
at his aboriginal naked progenitor, he digs down through 
layer on layer of humanity the depth of all those ages, 
peeling off accretions without number. There at the bot- 
tom is the naked truth. But a great many things have 
happened since then. The ape has become a very differ- 
ent creature, so different that it is only at moments and in 
rare cases that the consanguinity is suspected between him 
and the human race. He stands on two feet now, erect, 
with upright spine and trunk, the spine a column and not 
a horizontal conduit for transmitting sensations, and that 
change alone indicates and makes a new creature. Every 
physical organ, from highest to lowest, acquires a different 
relative position, and with that, new expansion and in- 
creased function ; the arms and hands are freed for use ; 
the claws become fingers, endowed with nerves of exquisite 
sensibility. The head is newly poised, and in consequence 
is rendered capable of new motions. Its shape alters by 
virtue of its erect position ; the features become handsome ; 
the countenance, no longer kept down near the earth with 
back-head upwards but raised to meet the light that streams 



THE NAKED TRUTH. 153 

from above, falls into harmonious proportions ; the brow 
expands ; the dome of the skull rounds grandly out ; the 
intellectual part predominates over the animal, and varied 
expressions of feeling play over the formerly impassive 
and imperturbable surface. The vital centres draw sus- 
tenance from fresh sources ; the influences of air and light 
tell on the frame with greatly augmented force ; instead 
of crouching low down to the earth, the vital parts hidden 
by the mass of the trunk, its eyes searching the ground, 
the creature moves through higher strata of atmosphere. 
The entire body has an equal chance at the quickening 
powers, the eye sweeps the horizon, the uplifted forehead 
is bathed in the upper air ; the firmament is revealed ; the 
look pierces the celestial spaces ; the all-covering heavens 
drop their grandeur upon the creature ; the direct ray 
strikes the level vision ; the brain swells, its substance ac- 
quires finer texture, its convolutions multiply; it becomes 
an organ of intelligence, sensitive to impressions incon- 
ceivably more numerous and inconceivably more delicate 
than the maturest ape catches ; images are there of ob- 
jects the chimpanzee can never behold ; currents of sensa- 
tion wind and play which the gorilla is no more aware of 
than the Sphynx of Egypt is aware of the breezes that 
blow the light sand from its back. In the long process of 
centuries, the ape has been clothed upon with many attri- 
butes of flesh and blood, every lineament and fibre of 
him has been transformed, his very skin has become a 
garment so exquisite in quality that it resembles the 
original membrane about as nearly as the hair shirt of the 
Baptist resembled Paul's spiritual body. To learn the 
simple truth about man, all this must be taken into account. 
The most perfect specimen of the race tells the purest 
truth about the race. The last acquisition contributes to 

the last judgment. To know the full truth respecting 

7* 



154 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

man, we should look forward not backward, up not down. 
It is a matter of prophecy not of tradition. 

The materialist comes along; call him Yogt, Moles- 
chott, Biichner, and proposes to tell us the naked truth 
about the human brain. He discovers there no soul, no 
intelligence, no mind. He has taken it to pieces and 
found out what it is made of. Here in brief- is the result : 
eighty parts are water, seven parts are albumen, a little 
more than live parts are cerebral fat, a little more than 
five parts are acids, salts and sulphur, the rest is almost 
equally divided between osmazome and phosphorus. 
There is the naked truth respecting the human brain, 
which the poets and theologians speak of in such exalted 
terms as the " seat of reason," the " dwelling-place of the 
soul." Yes, that is the naked truth, but is it the truth, 
robed and adorned f If you put those same ingredients 
nicely proportioned and mingled into a silver vase will 
they perform the functions of a brain, will they throb, 
tingle and think? will " Hamlets," and "Phsedons" and 
"Principias" exhale from the mixture? will the genius 
of Bafaelle steam up ? will the mental powers of a Bacon 
become visible, ascending therefrom ? Something is 
added by nature which the chemist leaves out, namely the 
secret of combination^ which qualities the ingredients to 
discharge their special office. Another thing the philoso- 
pher omits to mention, the ages of experience which have 
deposited the results of cumulative discipline, have dis- 
covered the precise proportions in which the animal ingre- 
dients are mingled to the best advantage, and have per- 
fected the combinations for their fine uses. The brain is 
composed of the aforesaid ingredients, plus these myriads 
of ethereal deposits. The education of the brain creates 
the brain, and the results of education no chemical test 
will ever discover. To learn those we must tak# the liv- 



THE NAKED TRUTH 155 

ing organ at the moment of its grandest performance, as 
illustrated by some Leibnitz or Newton, some Dante, Shake- 
speare or Goethe. The naked truth about the brain is of 
the smallest possible value. The truth clothed and adorn- 
ed is alone significant, and what that may be only the 
regal intellects will show. That truth the most enthusi- 
astic language is feeble to express. Call it the organ of 
intelligence, the instrument of genius, the seat of inspira- 
tion, the dwelling-place of immortal attributes, and you 
do not dignify it too much : for all this it is. As the child 
cannot find the secret of the flower's bloom and fragrance 
by pulling it to pieces, neither can the chemist find the 
secret of intelligence by inspecting the contents of a cra- 
nium. There must needs be a poet to do justice to the 
flower ; there must needs be an idealist to do justice to a 
brain. 

The argument may be pushed into other spheres with 
equal pertinency and with greater force. In moral ques- 
tions the real truth is commonly far away from the naked 
truth ; the' naked truth is but a skeleton. A man lived in 
Paris whose whole aspect was that of a beggar ; he lived 
in squalor, dressed in rags, ate food that the swine would 
fain fill their bellies withal ; he spent nothing in pleasure ; 
he gave nothing in charity ; he was known of all men as 
a disagreeable, sour, crusty creature without natural sym- 
pathies or the ordinary traits of humanity : he died, and 
in looking into his effects a will was discovered bequeath- 
ing all he had, a large fortune, the savings of many years, 
to the founding of a hospital for incurables. 

A similar case occurred not long since in New York. 
The tenant of a back attic room was found dead in a 
wretched apartment, in circumstances calculated to excite 
deep commiseration. The floor was uncarpeted, the fuel 
box was empty, the stove was cold, the window-frames 



156 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

were broken, and the vacant spaces stuffed with old bits 
of cloth or paper, the bed was a heap of rags ; the other 
inmates of the house knew nothing about the man ; they 
had seen him stealing in and out, and had supposed him 
to be a miser who lived by beggary, and from shame, self- 
contempt or misanthropy avoided his fellow-creatures. 
But the simple truth about the man was not so easily 
reached. That which men saw was literally the naked 
truth. The complete truth, robed and adorned, proved to be 
that the man lived in his sympathies with the humbler crea- 
tures. As the years went by they filled him with pity to- 
wards the brute beasts whom he saw daily insulted and 
abused in the streets. He lived not for himself but for 
them ; that they might be happier he was content to be 
miserable ; in his cold garret he was warmed by the senti- . 
ments of his heart ; there were kind thoughts in that head 
so shaggy and hard ; in that withered repulsive bosom tender 
feelings had their abode ; what Grcethe called the noblest 
reverence, reverence for that which is below us, dignified 
his soul ; he was clothed upon many many times by the 
house eternal in the heavens, and so when physically un- 
clothed, he was not found naked. Under his bed was found 
enough to gladden the heart of the brave man who makes 
the cause of the brute creatures his own. The naked 
truth about avarice is often a very different thing from 
the real truth. 

The principle has moral applications of serious impor- 
tance. There is an old popular and evil habit of judging 
character by picking it to pieces. I am afraid the theolo- 
gians who had a zeal for the doctrine of natural depravity 
started it. Their method was to submit characters to the 
action of crucible and retort, to resolve the seeming virtues 
and graces into a few very cheap ill-flavored and ill-scented 
elements, and to show as the residuum at the bottom of 






THE NAKED TRUTH. 157 

the crucible an ugly lump of selfishness. The apparent 
nobleness and saintliness were not discoverable. 

Certain minute philosophers, as they seem to me, of the 
last century, adopted a similar method. Their plan was to 
strip off what they called the amiable disguises of quali- 
ties, the mask of disinterestedness, charitableness, kindness, 
and show beneath them the play of selfish inclinations. 
It pleased them to exhibit man at the last analysis as a 
machine worked by two wires, fear and hope, dread of pain 
and desire for pleasure. This, said Helvetius and his 
school, is the simple unvarnished fact. 

The gossips, tale-bearers, censorious critics of the com- 
munity pursue the same evil course. Pouncing upon some 
well reputed person, they pick at him till they find an in- 
firmity, a foible, fault, some unlovely deed or unlucky 
step, a blunder perhaps, an ugly speck in the disposition, 
and setting everything else aside, they hold it up before 
all eyes, and say : " See here, this is the person you rever- 
ence ; this is your saint, your hero, your exemplar. He is 
no better than he should be." By this rule you may prove 
any man base. On this estimate no character possesses 
worth ; for the best inherit vices of the blood, infelicities 
of structure for which they are not responsible and which 
they cannot overcome. The question is, have they tried 
to overcome them, have they overlaid them with any de- 
posits of virtue ? 

King David was guilty of very blac*k deeds, lustful and 
infamous. • There was wild blood in his veins, and power 
had turned his head. But he confessed his sin, accepted 
chastisement meekly. He had royal elements in his 
nature, and he did his best to make them supreme. His 
acts of penitence and prayer were sincere ; his psalms 
were an aroma from a great soul, and these after all exhibit 
the truth concerning the man, not the naked truth, but 



158 TEE NAKED TRUTH. 

the truth clothed upon. The instrument by which it is 
discovered is sympathy ; love alone perceives qualities in 
their relations, and every person, the meanest, the guilti- 
est, those whose volcanic passions tear the fair surface of 
their existence, have their periods of rest when the sun- 
light and the dew refresh and gladden their being. There 
are motives, intentions, memories, hopes, feelings, that 
envelop even the worst deeds, and make them other than 
they seem. But this line investiture is invisible to all 
mortal eyes. 

The truth I am expounding is so wide that I must push 
my exposition further in order to display its bearings. My 
friend peels off covering after covering from Christianity, 
and having unwrapped and laid by the integuments that 
two thousand years have folded about it, shows the small 
kernel inside and calls it Christianity. Here you have it, 
he says, the real thing as disclosed by the last analysis ; 
here it is, a faith that Jesus was the Christ. This is 
the whole of it ; you see how small it is ; you perceive 
how foreign to our sympathies it is ; how little it is 
capable of being or doing for us, how small an interest 
modern men and women have in it. All the rest is 
aftergrowth. 

My friend is quite right ; Christianity as a naked new- 
born babe was nothing more than this. This was all it 
was eighteen hundred years ago ; this little seed-corn tit 
to feed a squirrel. But the seed was planted in Palestine, 
Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Germany, Britain. It took 
root, grew and flowered variously according to soil, climate 
and nurture. Eighteen hundred years have elapsed. The 
little seed has become a forest ; its fleshly tabernacle was 
dissolved, and it was clothed upon wonderfully by houses 
without number not made by hands. The winds of per- 
secution carried it from Palestine to Europe ; it took root 



■"., 



THE NAKED TRUTH. . 159 

in strange soils ; it collected about itself strange influences ; 
its fruit took color and savor from the social world it grew 
in. The Christ idea that was the primitive germ became 
transmuted into marvellous shapes suited to the needs of 
modern people in a world of which the Jews knew noth- 
ing; social customs grew about it, laws, institutions, 
standards of character, modes of life, movements of phil- 
anthropy, all characterized by the spirit of the new ages ; 
at length the original germ all but disappears from view 
in the finer forms of the faith, and what remains is a har- 
vest of moral sentiments, crops of ideas, principles, 
feelings, that were not contained by any means in the 
original seed-corn, but which the intellectual light and air 
of the western world produced as they acted on it. This 
vast, various, abundant, exuberant product, with its num- 
berless ramifications, its infinite complexities, is Christian- 
ity, not a simple thing at all, but a whole world of things, 
many of which seem scarcely related to one another, 
worships, reforms, charities, traditions, anticipations, be- 
liefs, piled up layer on layer, spread out wide like the 
branches of some gigantic tree that has dropped its suckers 
into the ground till it has become a continent of trees. 
Theodore Parker said, all sects and churches are required 
to express Christianity as it exists to-day; and the saying 
is true, because the leaven of the religion has affected 
every department of civilization. Indeed there is more 
in Christianity than all the sects represent. Though 
Romanism perished, though the Protestant churches 
disappeared, though the Unitarians and other denomina- 
tions vanished, there would stHl be something left, a grace, 
an aroma, an atmosphere, a spirit and style of being, which 
men enjoy, feel, live by, but cannot explain. 

Once such a thing existed as naked truth, but no such 
thing as naked truth exists to-day. All truth is clothed 



160 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

and adorned, and when most clothed and adorned is most 
itself. In times of ignorance people enriched their world 
with fairies and nymphs, naiads, dryads, spirits of wood 
and river. But our world is so rich that devices of this 
kind are not required. The dry bones of fact are covered 
with the softest verdure, the skeleton rocks are clad with 
soils, and where once were wildernesses are the habitations 
of men. They who would find the naked truth now must 
dig and delve for it. 

I pray that in this mass of illustration my point may 
not be lost sight of. I wish to beget a persuasion that 
the true way to find truth of any kind is to take it in its 
most advanced and complete form, and then employ the 
method of synthesis. Paul says " prove all things/' as if 
that were an undertaking anybody could enter on. But 
the task of proving or testing the least thing is exceed 
ingly arduous. It requires all the powers, and tasks all 
the faculties one has. To find the whole truth respecting 
a June rose calls into requisition all the resources of modern 
science, and even with their help the inmost secret will be 
concealed. The chemist analyses the soil in which it has 
root ; the naturalist studies its vessels, its stalk, its leaves ; 
the physicist makes it his business to detect the effects of 
the sunbeam on its petals ; the physiologist traces the 
processes of its growth from simple to complex, and at- 
tempts to show the law by which, in the development of 
species, it came to be precisely what it is. Finally, the 
poet takes the flower up into the realm of sentiment, as- 

l 

sociates it with youth, beauty, purity, love, gives it a 
place in the world of fancy where it blooms forever. 

A prosaic visitor in a picture gallery judged of the 
paintings on the walls by the extent of canvas they cov- 
ered, and the amount of pigment that was employed on 
them. If permitted, he would have found out the naked 



THE NAKED TRUTH. 161 

truth in regard to them with a yard-stick and a penknife. 
Yet, to penetrate the soul of one of them, how much was 
required ? The eye practiced in lines and colors, ac- 
quaintance with the forms of natural objects and the 
human figure, knowledge of the principles of grouping 
and perspective, familiarity with the artist's methods, 
insight into the motives of a piece, the sentiment of 
beauty, love of the ideal. Leave out any one of these, and 
the judgment is at fault ; combine them all, and no more 
than justice is done to a master's creation. 

Shall we think less of the divine master's creations than 
of these canvas productions ? Will we think to get at 
the secret of a faith by pulling it to pieces, and not by 
following the law of its structure ? Our modern practice 
has been in the art of analysis — the art of reducing all 
things to their elements. It is the scientific method, and 
the value of it cannot be estimated too highly. To pul- 
verize the solid substances of the earth, to reduce adamant 
to vapor, and behind the vapor to touch the imponderable 
forces that perform the work of creation — to grind to 
powder the solid institutions of men, to resolve establish- 
ments into ideas, and behind the mask of usage detect the 
movements of the bodiless thought that indicates the 
presence of universal mind, to sift motives and decompose 
principles till the roots of character are laid bare, is cer- 
tainly a useful thing to do — all honor to the men that do 
it ! This is to get at the beginning of creation, at the 
origins of existing things. But it is by the opposite pro- 
cess that we arrive at the glory of creation, and see the 
consummation of created things. To reduce the diamond 
to carbon was a contribution to chemical knowledge ; but 
to transform the carbon into diamond was a triumph of 
creative genius. The dissolution of the fleshly tenement 
into dust is a feat of daily occurrence ; but out of the dust 



162 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

to create a man, is the effort of Omnipotence. Does any 
one ask which is the nobler % 

One may well stand in awe as he thinks of what cheap 
material the finest things are made, but to preserve the 
awe, thought must dwell on the fine things, not on the 
cheap material. A sunset "cloud is composed of a wisp of 
vapor and a sunbeam, but the gorgeous phenomenon at- 
tracts all eyes, that watch with emotion the strange phan- 
tasmagoria of mountain ranges, castles, cities, grotesque 
forms of animals, monsters and men, shapes of grazing 
sheep, camels traveling over wastes of sand, flocks of 
birds flying in the air. The vision fades but is forever and 
forever renewed, and as often as it is repeated, the chil- 
dren of men, the glad, the grieving, poets, lovers, mourners, 
feel the active enchantment in their hearts. 

" We are such stuff as dreams are made of," says Pros- 
pero, " and our little life is rounded by a sleep." But we 
are what we are, nevertheless, fearfully and wonderfully 
made as to our bodies, and miracles of wonder as to our 
minds. The slenderness of the material does not preju- 
dice the solidity of the result. 

Most enduring beliefs of mankind are composed of ele- 
ments so slight that they almost vanish at a touch. The 
belief in God, for example, is made of very ethereal stuff, 
the feeling of awe, the sentiment of veneration, the sense 
of dependence on higher powers, the emotion of trust, the 
childlike instinct that leads in search of causes for phenom- 
ena ; yet the belief has a strength like that of the ancient 
hills round whose base civilizations appear and disappear, 
in whose vales hamlets nestle, whose summits watch-towers 
crown. 

An analysis of the faith in immortality makes us won- 
der how it came into being. Its origins seem not only 
obscure, but in some respects discreditable, as when one 



THE NAKED TRUTH. 163 

of its roots is seen to be the childish belief in ghosts and 
spectres. As water-drops compose the rainbow, so do 
falling tears compose in large part the bow of heavenly 
promise that spans the abyss of death. It is only while 
the showers are falling and the sun is low that the arch 
appears in its beanty. 

The world of the hereafter is called into existence by 
the passionate hopes, longings, demands, anticipations of 
men and women in their excited honrs of bereavement or 
disappointment. Take these one by one, each by itself, 
how evanescent, how all but illusory they appear ; how 
wild seems the notion that aught permanent can arise out 
of them ! And yet the faith bears the weight of centuries ; 
great souls find refuge in it ; and to multitudes it stands 
as the one assurance that is certain and immovable. The 
house not made with hands is the house that is eternal. 

Nothing is more solid than character ; nothing on the 
whole is so solid. A great character is the type of the 
everlasting. It is the crystalization of the qualities that 
we call divine, immortal — justice, truth, purity, kindness, 
simplicity, faith. It is the diamond that is hardest of all 
substances and yet the most dazzlingly beautiful. But 
what is it made of? Aspirations, purposes, endeavors, 
good thoughts, just emotions, acts of fidelity which become 
compacted together, vitalized, organized, till they are 
proof against all the agencies that would pulverize them 
or reduce them to vapor. 

All fine beliefs grow richer with time, under the succes- 
sive accumulations of experience that gather upon them. 
They lose their simplicity, but they gain in luxuriance ; 
they are more complex but more glorious. The belief in 
God as held by Herbert Spencer or John Tyndall, is to 
the belief of an ancient Israelite as the heaven of Her- 
schel is to the firmament of Joshua, or a modern city like 



164 THE NAKED TRUTH. 

London, to Bethlehem. It is too vast to be explored, too 
complicated to be described. Compare the belief in prov- 
idence as entertained by the Hebrew prophets, with the 
belief in providence as held by Theodore Parker or Stuart 
Mill. They are as imlike as the acorn and the oak ; yet 
the new belief and the old one are the same, except that 
some twenty-five hundred years have done their work in 
depositing knowledge and reflection on the primitive per- 
suasion of mankind. 

Place side by side the germinal idea of immortality as 
described by Lubbock and Tylor with the idea as it lies 
to-day in the minds of religious people in Christendom. 
Consider the numerous phases of the faith as it is profess- 
ed by mankind, from the atheist's conception of immor- 
tality in the race, to the spiritualist's familiar thought of 
the departed as personally alive and near, within reach of 
communication, and even palpable to touch, from the sen- 
timental dream of Renan, who tenderly addresses the 
thought of his dead sister, to the sober business-like per- 
suasion of the man of affairs who consults the spirits on 
matters of finance and politics. The faith that was once 
a flower is now a forest, solemn with shade, bright with 
vistas opening right and left to the sunlit world, the refuge 
of the storm-beaten, the haunt of dreamers. 

As faiths thus become rich with time, the minds that 
are privileged to cherish them ought to expand with satis- 
faction. The seekers after the naked truth, living under 
ground among the roots of things, toiling in laboratories, 
busy at the task of trying all precious substances by fire, 
resolving the jewels of the world into smoke, the critics 
whose office it is to reduce things to their rudimentary 
elements, can hardly be expected to rejoice ardently over 
their work. They do not see things as they are, but as 
they were in the beginning ; they see the seed, not the 



THE NAKED TRUTH. 165 

flower ; the sucker, not the fruit ; the germ cell, not the 
organism ; their gaze is riveted on a point of exceeding 
smallness ; they have little time or disposition to look 
around and up. The duty of generalizing must be left to 
others. They scrutinize, and if at times a feeling comes 
over them of the poverty and emptiness of the universe, 
they are not to be blamed, but forgiven and blessed for 
their needed service. 

But they whose faces are not held in this way to the 
earth, they who can take a broad survey of the world they 
live in, can catch the odors of its flowers and taste the 
sweetness of its fruits, can revel in the light of its sun- 
rises and sunsets and enjoy the eternal beauty of its stars, 
should go about filled with serene thoughts, feeling that 
now they are the sons of God, content that it doth not 
yet appear what they shall be, but satisfied that whatever 
does appear will be more glorious than anything which is. 



X. 

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

rr^HE belief in a dying God is the centre of the whole 
-■- Christian system, as it is also the root of nearly all 
the ancient religions. The belief, stated in its bare form, 
is this ; — Touched by the unspeakable sorrow of the world, 
moved by the misery in which the human race lay, 
shocked by the guiltiness into which his moral creation 
had fallen, the Almighty left his throne of light, came 
down from his eternal seat, took upon himself the f orm of 
a man, underwent all the sufferings of common humanity, 
and, at last, after a short career, which was, nevertheless, 
long enough for him to go through every phase of human 
experience and life, allowed himself to be put to death as 
a malefactor by the humiliating punishment of the cross. 
This prodigious transaction is held to be justified by the 
assumed necessity of lifting mankind out of their wretch- 
ed, sinful state, they being utterly powerless to help them- 
selves, even to raise themselves from the ground, to ad- 
vance themselves at all in the direction of their own im- 
provement or salvation. Doomed to everlasting death, 
nothing less than the death of the Everlasting could re- 
store their hope of life. 

This is the central belief of the Christian religion, and, 
as I have said, of all the ancient religions. It is the cen- 
tral belief of the religion of this present time, not by any 
means remanded to a secondary place in thought. Slightly 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 167 

modified or mitigated it may be in some of its accidents, 
but at heart it is the same thing at present that it was two, 
three, four thousand years ago. In the larger number of 
churches in any of our cities this belief will be preached 
to-day in the sermons, will saturate the prayers, will 
breathe through the strains of the organ and the music of 
the choir, will appear in every emblem that is presented 
to the eye, will stand before the worshippers' vision carved 
or emblazoned in the form of cross or cup. It will sigh 
and wail through the mournful verses of the Episcopal 
liturgy ; it will be the soul of the creed that the people 
repeat after the priest ; it will, in fact, be the pervading 
idea and sentiment of teaching and worship. 

The belief is not confined to Sunday observance or the 
services of the Church. It is worked into the theories of 
common life. It comes out in every great crisis of human 
experience, in each grand event of existence. In the 
chamber of the dying the priest murmurs it in straining 
ears. It stands by the grave and rolls over its mould the 
solemn words of redemption by the blood of the Crucified. 
Grief confesses the claim and exalts the glory of the dy- 
ing God. The sorrow-stricken are comforted by the 
thought that the Lord has died for the sorrowing. The 
guilty are confronted with the terrible fact that because 
they were guilty the Infinite Perfection itself had to bow 
to the bitterness of death. 

To us such a belief seems grotesque, and that only. 
For my own part, I have no words to express the literal 
absurdity of it. When we think of God as modern men 
are educated to think of him, as the Infinite, the Eternal, 
the Unknown, the Unsearchable, the Permanent in the 
universe, the perfect Wisdom and Truth, the absolute 
Goodness, the Being in whose hands all these systems of 
worlds are less than the dust in the balance ; when we 



168 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

think of man and of the little planet that he lives on — 
one of the smallest and darkest of all the orbs that God 
has created ; when we think of the scale of his troubles, 
and cares, and sorrows, of his few battles and faint striv- 
ings and evanescent griefs, his snperb endowments, his 
magnificent apparatus of self-help, his unused powers, and 
then picture this great Being as coming down, clothing 
himself with flesh, and submitting to be driven about, 
beaten and buffeted, scorned, spit upon, and mocked, and 
finally nailed to a tree, that these creatures of his may be 
redeemed, — why, it is not in the modern understanding to 
take in such extravagant incongruities of thought. The 
belief is a poem, an allegory, a parable, a divine romance, 
a dream of the soul It is one of those holy fables of 
Providence which, under a grotesque and strange form, 
convey, perhaps a shadowy, yet a profound truth. 

I do not believe in pouring contempt upon any wide- 
spread faith. Whatever nations of men have believed in 
is sacred, even though it be obsolete. A faith so univer- 
sal as this, that has prevailed all over Asia, that the Asia- 
tics handed to the Greeks, that the Greeks handed to the 
Christians, is a sacred faith ; it means something, and 
what it means it is worth while to know. 

The belief in a dying God has accomplished three 
things. In the first place, it has imparted to Providence 
an attribute of exceeding tenderness. It has put a tear, 
we may say, into the eye of the Omnipotent. It has made 
the almighty heart of the world throb and beat with emo- 
tions of compassion. Estimate the power of this if you 
can. When the wise man sits down to teach a child ; 
when a man of exalted rank or great power stoops to lift up 
from the dust some miserable, obscure, and despised crea- 
ture ; when a person of eminent character or lofty endow- 
ment fights the battle of the scorned and outcast, the very 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 169 

thought of it touches the heart to the core. But to think 
that God himself, the Supreme Goodness and Serenity, the 
Holiness and Peace of the world, actually came down in 
person, stood by the side of the dying, called back the dead 
to life, wept over humble graves, took little children in his 
eternal arms, and comforted wretched mothers for the loss 
of their darlings, sat in fishing-boats teaching their duty to 
simple people, the thought of it was enough to break the 
heart of the world, and it did. A great sob of penitential 
agony went up from those early ages to which this faith 
was living ; a great sob of shame and pity, as if the heart 
of mankind was breaking. It was too much that all 
these little ones should be thought of graciously by the 
Most High. In dark ages, when there was no knowledge, 
or justice, no general idea of kindness, no conception of 
Providence, no knowledge of the world, of things, or 
men, no understanding of human nature or social rela- 
tions — in those dark ages, truly dark, not only intellectu- 
ally but spiritually bl'ack — in those ages, a faith like this 
was worth more than all the teaching that could be given 
by the wisest men. Men are even now reached through 
their emotions more easily than through their under- 
standings, and a faith like this brought an omnipotent 
force to bear upon the very tenderest spot in human 
nature. 

Another effect this belief had. It sanctified suffering ; 
it made human sorrow a consecrated thing ; it took the 
pitiful weakness and wretchedness of the world into the 
sheltering arms of God. The realm of coldness and 
dreariness was no longer an outside realm ; it was annexed 
to heavenly places, and made a constituent portion of the 
celestial domain. The sufferers stood nearest to heaven-; 
they were the most loved ; theirs was a privileged condi- 
tion. To be in want, and poverty, and weakness ; to be 



170 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

buffeted and despised ; to be persecuted and forsaken ; to 
be hated of all men, was to enter into the secret expe- 
rience of God's own history. By this way mortals found 
entrance into bliss. Sorrow no longer implied sin, no 
longer shut people out from the Lord ; it was sorrow that 
brought people into full communion with the Lord, and 
made God verily a Father. The great sorrows of the 
world seemed now to have a touching expression in them. 
The streams of blood that were shed on holy battle-fields 
and scaffolds seemed to pour from the Redeemer's side. 
The oceans of tears that innocence shed dropped from 
heavenly eyes. The sighs and sobs, the moanings and 
wailings of the providentially afflicted, the cries of agony 
in sick-rooms, in hospitals, and desolated homes were the 
sighs, as it were, of God himself weeping for his little 
ones. Yes, those bitterest woes that men bring upon 
themselves by their recklessness and guilt — the awful pes- 
tilences, the ravaging plagues, the hideous wars, the fright- 
ful distempers, that sometimes fairly took possession of 
the world and decimated mankind — what were they but 
so many expressions of the infinite loving-kindness of 
God, that would not allow his people to sink away into 
recklessness and ignorance without an effort on his part 
to recover them ? Even in the woes that sin brought 
down there was something pathetic, pleading, touching ; 
and thus all the wretched, and even the family of the 
wicked, were brought into the bosom of the Eternal. 

Another effect this belief has had. It served as a 
refuge from atheism. The atheist says, How will you 
account for the wretchedness of the world on the theory 
that the world is provided for by a good God ? How can 
you explain the existence of want, poverty, suffering, 
agony, premature and violent death, broken hearts, crushed 
spirits, wasted lives, on the supposition that there is a 



THE DYING AND TBE LIVING GOD. 171 

thoughtful Deity ? If God is good, why is not the world 
happy ? If God loves his creatures, why does he leave 
them all, without exception, exposed to some kind of des- 
olation ? If God fills his heavens with light, why all this 
ignorance % If God is compassion, why all this complaint 
and bitterness ? If God loves the world, then the world 
should be lovely. Not so, says this old belief, not so ; it 
is because God loves the world that the world suffers. It 
is a mis-read legend that Adam and Eve were driven out 
of their Eden by an evil spirit. JSTo evil spirit ever drove 
man out of Paradise. ~No devil ever broke up that lus- 
cious state of moral unconsciousness. 

An evil spirit would have kept Eden as it was, an evil 
spirit would have multiplied Edens all over the earth, so 
that there should be nothing else. He would have weeded 
the ground, never allowing a briar or a thorn to appear. 
The days should always be sunny, the heavens always 
bright, the airs balmy, the trees fruitful, the ground fer- 
tile. No necessity for labor, if an evil spirit was near, no 
care, or trouble, or vexation, or annoyance ; no beasts to 
be exterminated, no reptiles to be eradicated, no insects 
to kill, no violent men to subdue ; nothing but ease and 
plenty, and abundance and felicity, in this realm. An 
evil spirit would have made the earth a garden, and there 
he would have placed humanity to rot. That fable was 
credited when man had no conception of what manhood 
was, or what it was that constituted a human creature. 
It was the love of God that drove man out of Eden into 
the world, where he might know good and evil, where he 
should have his destiny fairly set before him, and his fate 
in his own hand. Do you complain because the saints 
are persecuted, because the martyrs meet a bitter death, 
because the hero must lay down his life for a noble cause, 
because the grandest careers come to a premature end, 



172 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

because the heavenly-minded are destitute and forsaken, 
because the pure-hearted are scorned, because the " sons of 
men " have not where to lay their heads ? It was God 
who went through all these things. He accepted suffer- 
ing. It was He who was poor, and destitute, and forsaken, 
who had no place where to lay his head. It was He that 
suffered himself to be spit upon, and buffeted, and 
scourged, and scorned, and nailed to the tree. It was He 
who was brought to a premature end after a brief ministry 
of mercy. Will you say that the kindness of God is an 
argument against his existence ? Will you urge that God 
is to blame for laying upon his creatures the same expe- 
riences that he suffered himself? Will you make the 
infinite benignity of Heaven an argument against its 
character ? Nay ! rather stand confounded before this 
fact, that Heaven has stooped down and entered into the 
very secret of suffering, and in entering into it has justi- 
fied it, explained it, and consecrated it. 

This is the hidden meaning of that old belief. Look 
at it as poetry, and how beautiful it is ! Let the imagina- 
tion take it in, loveliness graces it all over. Let it lie 
simply in the heart as a sentiment, and it warms the heart 
to the core. But forget that it is poetry, read it as prose, 
instead of a parable make it a dogma, and the whole sig- 
nificance of it is changed. Instantly a veil comes over 
it all, and what was formerly so beautiful, touching, 
divine, becomes cold, strange, and mischievous. 

There are three evils that flow from this belief in a 
dying God. It is accountable for an enormous amount 
of sentimentalism, it begets a weak, puny, self-conscious, 
complaining heart. A dying God, a suffering God ! — then 
what is there worth thinking of but suffering and dying ? 
So men have moaned their sorrows, and told their woes 
over and over ; they have sought sorrow in all places, have 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 173 

gone to Nature for it, have fancied that creation was 
pitched on a minor key, have detected the sobs of anguish 
in the falling of waters, the blowing of winds, the rust- 
ling foliage of trees, the murmurs of the brooks. Where 
sorrow existed, they exaggerated it, dwelt upon it, pressed 
it in, made it more and more an ineradicable part of 
human experience. Where sorrow did not exist, they 
imagined it. All people must be sad, was the cherished 
persuasion. There is sorrow at the heart of everybody. 
Beware how you trust to joy or to hopefulness, there is a 
pensive strain in all human experience. So profoundly 
has this sentiment become impressed upon the heart of 
Christendom that nothing is accepted as good which has 
not a tinge of sorrow. Only the virtues that are born of 
sorrow, it is supposed, are real virtues. Patience, sub- 
mission, resignation, self-denial, self-renunciation — these 
are the admitted graces. The pale countenance is the 
interesting countenance. The downcast eye, full of 
unshed tears, is the human eye. This tinge of sorrow 
deepens even to blackness, and blots out the very light of 
joy. The glory is taken out of nature, the cordiality is 
taken out of society, the heartiness out of the heart. 
Here .is one evil — that men are made self -pi tying, led to 
call themselves miserable creatures, to say, " How sad we 
are ! how sad our neighbors are ! what a wretched world 
it is ! what a vale of sorrow we live in ! what a weary 
time we are all having of it ! if there was no other world 
but this, life would not be worth having ! " all morbid, 
mawkish, and sentimental, all depressing to the springs of 
health and life. 

Another mischief has followed from this belief. It 
has encouraged not only self-pity, but self-contempt. A 
dying God — why a dying God \ Because men were sunk 
in iniquity, and could not rescue themselves. But, if God 



174 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

dies because men are wicked, and if the death of God ' 
was necessary to rescue men from wickedness, then men 
must be very wicked indeed. There is no possibility of 
exaggerating the malignity and depravity of the world. 
God would not die for a peccadillo ; He would not die 
for a foible or for a fault, for a mistake or for a blunder. 
God would not come down from Heaven and die simply 
because men were stupid, or blind, or reckless, or foolish, 
or passionate ; He could only undergo such prodigious 
experiences because men were utterly depraved ; and so 
they must be. They must be, and you must make it out 
that they are ; and if they do not seem to be, you must 
prove that their seeming does not conform to fact. So, all 
over Christendom, for two thousand years, men have been 
peering down into their own consciousness, trying to dis- 
cover the seeds of evil there, never happy until they did ; 
perfectly happy if they could prove themselves to be good 
for nothing; entirely content if they could demonstrate 
beyond question the truth that they were miserable 
sinners ; supremely satisfied if they could comprehend the 
whole race % in the same dismal category. Could anything 
be more deplorable than that? Could any result of 
unbelief be more unfortunate ? This has been one 
result of the belief in a dying God — that men have dis- 
believed in their own nature, in the worth of their affec- 
tions, the integrity of their moral will, the nobleness of 
their conscience, and the purpose for which they were 
created. An orthodox preacher once said in my hearing, 
that men — other men — were born to live ; Christ was 
born that he might die. Was ever a more extravagant 
statement made than that ? 

Another mischief has resulted from this belief. It has 
deprived the world of the benefit of divine inspiration. 
For it has taken God out of life. The modern world is 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 175 

rendered vacant of divine influence. Men who live, work, 
purpose, strive, and endeavor here are not blessed in so 
doing by the divine spirit. That is away in Palestine. 
God's life culminated in a single hour in the city of Jeru- 
salem. He is shut up in a tomb ; He dwells in the shadow 
of death ; He belongs to the wretched and the sorrowful ; 
He is the property of the miserable ; He is not for those 
who are in light and joy, but for those who are in black- 
ness and grief. The consequence has been that to think of 
G-od it has been thought necessary to leave nature, life, 
business, art and literature, science and beauty, and to 
gather thought around that one hour of crucifixion. Thus, 
literally, we have been deprived of the magnetic power 
that comes from a conviction that God is with the world. 

Now, over against this belief in a dying God we set 
the belief in a Living God. A Living God. The very 
phrase has an ocean of light in it. It is full of aspiration. 
It gives us a sense of buoyancy only to speak the words. 
At once the universe awakes to joy. Man is a human 
creature again. He feels the breath of divine energy sweep- 
ing through his daily affairs. To come from the belief in 
a dying God to the belief in a living God is as when one, 
after wandering for hours in the depths of the earth, say 
in some mammoth cave, groping about among hidden 
rocks, creeping along ledges, and crouching in the black- 
ness, scarcely seeing in the distance a little trail of light 
thrown by the guide's torch, comes out again into the 
freshness and beauty of the world, to hear the singing 
birds, to see the green grass, and the trees waving in the 
wind. It is as when athwart a black cloud a beam of sun- 
light comes streaming down and gives a glory to the land- 
scape. It is as when after a period of cold easterly storms, 
during which people have been shut up in their houses, 
the earth has become saturated with water, the trees have 



176 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

drooped and dripped with wet, and all nature has seemed 
forlorn, forsaken, drowned, we wake up to find a balmy, 
sweet dawn. Then the earth itself seems to throb with 
new T life. The birds sing, as if they had learned a new 
hymn of praise. The drops of rain on the leaves are clus- 
ters of diamonds. Man himself goes singing to his work. 
The windows are thrown up ; doors stand wide 6*pen ; men 
go out upon their steps to breathe the air ; the church 
spires catch the sunbeams as they pour down from the 
sky ; the fronts of the ho'uses become beautiful in color, 
and the atmosphere seems oppressed with the task of bear- 
ing up to Heaven the grateful feelings of men. 

The belief in a living God restores God to the world ; 
makes him a part of it ; constitutes him the grand work- 
ing force in it. It makes him the God of business ; the 
God of recreation; the God of the exchange and the 
market ; the God of the railway and the ship ; the God 
of literature and art, of science and of progress. It puts 
him down here in the front rank of men. The humanita- 
rian does that service for Jesus when in the place of a 
dying God he "makes him a simple, living soul. Think of 
Jesus as a dying God, and your thoughts go back mourn- 
fully to Calvary ; you shed tears ; you kneel down in the 
dust of Gethsemane ; you hear his prayer, " Father, thy 
will, not mine, be done." Your thoughts are drawn away 
from domestic life, teaching, professions, whatever you may 
be doing, and are gathered up in a melancholy mood about 
the suffering King. Take Jesus now into the race ; make 
him a man, a simple, living man ; put him here ; take 
him into your shop ; meet him on the street ; associate 
him with your labor, with pleasure and care ; at once you 
have the the whole benefit of his being. The full weight 
of his life is thrown into your scale. His spirit is in your 
heart. You have the benefit of all that he was, and all that 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 177 

he knew. The orthodox presses a dying God to his imag- 
ination ; the humanitarian has a living God at his side. 
There is the difference. The evangelical worships a dying 
Christ in his church ; the rationalist goes hand in hand 
with a living Jesus to his labor. Just what is done for 
the world by substituting a living man for a dying deity, 
a living Jesus for a dying Christ, that is done when 
we substitute a living for a dying God. We give God 
to the world. We make him the life of the world — the 
living est life of the world. We throw the whole momen- 
tum of his omnipotence into the scale of our endeavors. 

Where will you go to seek the life of the age ? The liv- 
ing age — where is it ? You will not seek it in Wall street 
or on Broadway. It is not necessarily commerce, or 
finance, or politics, or business. All these things help the 
life of the age, but the life of the age is the effort of the 
age to create a perfect society. It is the endeavor to over- 
come evil, to cast out mischief, to reform the wrong, and 
relieve the wretchedness of the world. Everything that 
does this partakes of the life of the age. Commerce does ; 
so does traffic, and invention, and business, and art, and 
science, in proportion as they help on this great result. 
But the living part of the age is that part of human thought, 
purpose and feeling, that goes to make society better. 
How will you define a living man ? It is not the man who 
is in robust health. He may be very dead indeed. Many 
a man is of most rugged health, of blooming complexion, 
never tired, sleeps perfectly, always digests his food, and 
yet is a living grave. A smart business man is not neces- 
sarily a living man. The best part of him may be de- 
ceased, in spite of his smartness. His conscience may be 
deader than dead, and his soul may- never have been alive. 
He may be dead and buried. Your bright politician is not 
necessarily a living man. Not of necessity does he have 

8* 



178 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

anything to do with living things. He may be a corpse 
and the maker of corpses. He may be one of the sextons 
of civilization ; one of the grave-diggers of humanity, as 
too often he is. A living man is one whose life is in the 
effort to make society better ; to render the world better 
worth living in ; to advance its improvement and help its 
progress. A living man is a man who, whatever he does, 
whether he be merchant or manufacturer, engineer, trader 
or artist, acts, with the purpose through his acting, to 
make men kinder, juster, sweeter and fairer than they are 
now. 

Such is the life of the age, and such is a living man. 
Now what is a living God ? It is a God who is living in 
this same sense ; a God who is associated with our effort to 
make society what it ought to be — just, pure, kind, fair, 
and sweet. And it is in vain to think of any other God as 
living ; idly do you speak of a God that did live. Jeho- 
vah's name was I am • not I was, not I shall be, but I am. 
God is. The living God is the God that is. Vainly will 
you seek him in the past, you are not in the past ; vainly 
will you anticipate finding him in the future, you are not in 
the future ; vainly will you think of him as being in Heav- 
en, you are not in Heaven ; or in the abyss, you are not in 
the abyss. You are here, this moment, on the face of the 
globe. Men may say, " lo here, lo there," do not believe 
it ; " he is in the desert," follow not after him. Nothing 
makes one feel the living God but the sense that one is 
himself alive. It is perfectly useless to try to get at a liv- 
ing God except by living ; useless is the wisdom of the 
wise ; of no avail the vision of the seraph. The living 
God is the God who is living with living men and in a liv- 
ing age. He is with the lawyer who is trying to make 
justice the rule of human dealing. He is with the phy- 
sician who is trying to eradicate the seeds of disease. He 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 179 

is with the preacher who forgets himself in his truth. He 
is with the philanthropist who loves his fellow-men better 
than he loves himself. He is with the reformer who is re- 
forming according to a principle, and not according to a 
crotchet. He is with the merchant who is opening new 
avenues of communication between the families of man- 
kind. He is with the trader who is passing round the 
gifts of providence among all the members of the human 
race. He is with the artist who reproduces the most per- 
fect beauty. He is with the musician who puts into his 
song a strain of light and hope. He is with the man of 
science who is organizing the strong facts of creation. He 
is with the literary man who is expressing truth in forms 
of beauty. He is with the conservative who will hold on 
to all the good there is, and with the radical who will eradi- 
cate all the evil. He is with all men, of whatever degree, 
of whatever station, who are doing something to add a lit- 
tle spark to the blaze which is to consume the rubbish of 
human experience. 

The living God is a human God. Swedenborg says : 
God is a man, and that man is Christ. We say God is not 
a man, but the human in all men. God is the human 
power, the human element, the element which uplifts, 
inspires, impels forward to brighter and better futures. 
Man's justice is God's justice. Man's compassion is God's 
compassion. Man's kindness is God's kindness. When 
man forgives, God forgives. When man absolves, God 
absolves. All God's attributes are human attributes, and 
they are living as they live in us, not as they live out of 
us. The very unity of God is one with our unity. Is 
God one while his family are a thousand ? Does not all 
the recklessness, and hate, and quarrel, and discord of the 
world break up into pieces our conception of the divine 
unity ? Of course it does ; for it suggests a kingdom 



180 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 

divided against itself. God lives when man lives. God 
lives in the human heart ; when the heart begins to throb 
and beat, his heart throbs and beats ; and when the 
human heart dies, then, and then only, God expires. 

This is no speculative thing that I have been saying ; it 
is of immense practical moment. If, a few years ago, the 
Bible could have been set steadily on the side of those who 
were working in this country for freedom, our war would 
have been rendered entirely unnecessary ; the mere fact 
that the Bible, the so-called Word of God, ranked itself 
with liberty, light, justice, would have thrown the pre- 
ponderating weight of the religious sentiment into that 
scale, and would have secured victory. If the Bible 
could be planted fairly and squarely on the side of those 
who contend for the social rights and privileges of women, 
for the improvement of the condition of the working 
classes, for reform in civil and criminal jurisprudence, 
these things would be carried, simply because those who 
put their faith in the Bible, believing it to be the revealed 
Word of God, would rally to these causes. So, if we 
could take this great thought of God, fraught as it is with 
inspiration, full as it is of light and life, of hope and 
purpose ; if we could, I say, take this thought and associate 
it with all we believe of truest, all we hope of dearest, all 
we purpose of best, then all this belief, hope, and purpose 
would be charged with the very spirit of victory. 

Over against one of these beliefs, therefore, I set the 
other. The one belief looks to the past ; the other has 
its eye on the future. The one belief cowers before God ; 
the other stands erect and looks him in the face. The 
one belief is fighting always with the devil ; the other 
greets the coming of the angels. The one belief begs its 
way into Heaven ; the other runs thither with jubilant 
feet. The one belief shudders in the presence of hell ; 



THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 181 

the other smiles in the presence of heaven. The one be- 
lief connts over the sins and perplexities, the ills and dis- 
advantages of life ; the other counts over its benefits and 
benedictions, its privileges and its pleasures. The one belief 
is full of awe ; the other is the very incarnation of hope. 
A poor woman the other day came to me and said : " I 
want you to help us — myself, my husband, and my child." 
I asked her what was her need, and she told me their 
history. " Are you connected with no church % " I in- 
quired. " No." " Have you never been ? " " Yes." 
" Where do you belong ? " " My husband is a Unitarian 
and I am a Catholic." " Will the Catholics do nothing 
for you?" " Well, the truth is, neither of us have had 
anything to do with religion for a long time. We were 
prosperous once, and happy : now we have fallen upon 
evil times, and we think of God." Why did they not 
think of God in happy times ? Why did they not asso- 
ciate God with their felicity, and success, and prosperity ? 
Why, when everything went well, was not God hopeful- 
ness in their heart, and energy in their will ? It was be- 
because he was not, and because in their hopeful and 
happy times they were simply selfish, thought only of 
themselves, never cared to form line relationships, or to 
make earnest friends, that, therefore, they were left 
wretched and dismayed. Must we always be scourged to 
the banquet of life ? Must we always be dragged into 
heaven by the hair of our heads? Will it never be 
enough that beauty, and privilege, and opportunity are all 
before us, but we must be goaded to them by the fiends ? 
Time has been when fear and darkness were the spirits 
that saved the world. In the time to come the world w T ill 
be saved by light, and joy, and hope. 



XL 

THE INFEKNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOYE. 

He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for 
my sake shall find it. Matthew x. 39. 

r 1 1 HIS is one of those paradoxes which are familiar in 
-*- the language of the East, and which Jesus was espe- 
cially fond of using to impress his thought the deeper upon 
the minds of his hearers by shocking them into considera- 
tion of its meaning. There are two readings of the pass- 
age. In the gospel of John the version stands, " He that 
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in 
this world, shall keep it unto life eternal." There are 
two interpretations of the passage : 

First — He who exposes himself to danger and to death 
for my sake shall inherit praise, honor, and emolument, 
when I come again in my kingdom. 

Second — He that lives a life of self-denial in this world 
shall have his reward in the world to come. 

But there is another interpretation that goes deeper 
than either of these, and in my judgment is much truer. 
He that denies his lower love shall have the satisfaction of 
his higher. He that puts away passion shall enjoy princi- 
ple. He that abandons the life of desire shall enter into 
the life of spiritual joy. 

The life of a man is the love of the man ; the love of 
the man is his life. The words love and life are closely 
connected in their root ; and if we substitute in these pass- 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 183 

ages the word love for the word life, a world of meaning 
is at once unfolded to us that otherwise we miss ; because 
the word love drives the thought inward and keeps it there, 
while the word life throws the thought outward and leaves 
it there. We think of life as a thing of duration and 
extension in space and time. We think of love only as a 
state or condition of feeling. We speak of present life, 
past life, future life, of the life here and the life hereafter, 
of this life and the next life ; but of love we only say it 
is better or it is worse ; it is higher or lower ; it is on the 
animal plane or the spiritual plane. In a word, love is a 
thing of qualities ; life is a thing of quantities. 

Now, speaking of love, we find that it has a double 
action ; one a self -referring, another social or human, re- 
ferring to others. The planets are kept in order, you 
know, by a double force ; the centre-seeking, the centrip- 
etal force, as it is called, which is always drawing the 
planet to its central orb ; the centrifugal or centre-avoid- 
ing force, that drives the globe away from the centre. 
Either of these forces acting alone would destroy the 
planet. The centripetal force, acting alone, would, by 
and by, mass the planets together, and at last absorb them 
all in the sun. The centrifugal force, acting alone, would 
scatter them widely apart and fling them into the vast 
inane, where they would be hopelessly lost ; there would 
be no more solar system. The action of both together 
keeps the planet in its place, steadily whirling round its 
centre and fulfilling its part in the divine decrees. So it 
is with this thing that we call love. At first it is a pas- 
sion. Man, in one aspect, is a mere organic creature. 
He is the last development of the material world ; a child of 
the mineral and vegetable ; developed out of the ground ; 
a bundle of propensities and instincts. His life is organic and 
simple, like the life of a tree or a plant. He is a creature of 



184 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

material circumstances and elements. As such he is inevit- 
ably self-seeking. Through his five senses man is doing his 
best all the time to draw in all the world. His eye seeks 
beauty in every part of the globe ; in the ground, in the 
skies, in the sunlight and the shadow, in the faces of his 
companions, in the landscape. " His eye dismounts the 
highest star," as old George Herbert so beautifully says. 
And, not satisfied with finding beauty everywhere, it must 
appropriate beauty everywhere. It will draw it in and 
make it its own. Man catches the sunlight and weaves it 
into his fine fabrics and tissues, his carpets, his drapery, 
paints it on the canvas, carves it in the marble statue, in- 
sists on having domesticated in his house all the glories of 
the outer world. 

The ear ! how it drinks in sounds ; how keen it is ; how 
devouring it is ! All voices come to it. It will invent 
instruments to make itself keener. Not satisfied with 
hearing the sounds in nature, it manufactures instruments 
for reproducing them. Music is its creature. It builds 
the organ with its array of golden pipes ; it fashions 
instruments of brass and the stringed instruments ; it 
brings together the orchestras that enchant us with their 
music. 

The sense of smell has narrower range, yet how greedy 
it is ! All odors come to it. It extracts the sweetest scent 
from the foulest things ; it is not content until it puts on 
our toilet-tables the fragrance of the violet and the odor of 
the newly-mown hay. 

The taste ! What a craving creature that is ! AY hat an 
explorer ! How it sends its purveyors out into the most 
distant parts of the creation, dispatches its divers down 
into the sea, drops its line deep into the ocean, lays snares 
for the birds of the air. What a plunderer it is of the 
vegetable and animal kingdom ! How it consumes and 



THE INFEENAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 185 

slays ! What devastation it makes everywhere, and what 
a keen power it has of extracting delicacies from places 
where nothing seemed to exist ! How it divides and sub- 
divides, and combines and compounds, and separates and 
mingles and mixes ! How it uses the subtle element of 
the fire for its purposes, and what elixirs it extracts there- 
by ; what delicate tinctures and aromas ! 

The marvels of the cuisine are infinite, and man is 
never satisfied with inventing, discovering, combining, 
flavoring, and devising new shapes of delicacy. There is 
no end to it. It goes vastly before human need. We are 
never content with the things that our senses can bring in 
to us. The Emperor Vitellius had but one stomach ; he 
could eat no more than the humblest of his guards ; yet 
he spent one million of dollars every week on his table. 
He did not need it ; it was the worse for him ; it made 
him sick ; it helped to kill him at last, and it earned for 
him the nickname of the " hog Vitellius»" 

Insatiable are these senses of ours. We build cities ; 
we form lines of commerce ; we clothe ourselves with 
silk, and satin, and velvet ; we construct vast ships. Yet 
our ships are only larger baskets ; our silk, and satin, and 
velvet are only a handsomer kind of blanket ; our vast 
commercial cities are but more superb shops and ware- 
houses ; our great ports of entry are simply broader door- 
steps ; and all our vast carrying-trade with fleets of ships 
is only a more elaborate peddling. 

Push the metaphor further. Take the passions. There 
is the love of power. Can anybody describe its voracity ? 
Did anybody ever have enough of it ? Was there ever a 
man having the most of it who did not want more ? The 
priest is never content with the power he has over human 
souls. The despot is never satisfied with the power that 
he has over human relations and conditions. The rich 



186 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

man is never satiated with the power he has over the 
poor. The tyrant is never weary of grinding. The con- 
queror is never tired of absorbing. Alexander the Great 
was not the only man who sighed because there were no 
more worlds for him to conquer. Every man who has 
this lust for power sighs for precisely the same thing. 
Napoleon sighed for it, and the present Napoleon, though 
a sick man, doomed probably within a few months to die — 
a man without a dynasty — has such a passionate greed for 
the power that he has gained that he will not loosen the 
reins that his hand holds, or give, in conformity with his 
own promises, the freedom he has pledged to the people. 
The Pope of Rome, an old man near his grave, at the head 
of an institution that is doomed by destiny to fall, reaches 
out both his hands and calls upon the whole civilized world 
to grant him more power over souls, more power over 
states. He must regulate public education and control 
the national and state politics even in America. And the 
more power a man has the more selfishly he uses it. This 
passion for power has been the curse of mankind. All 
the devastating wars have sprung from it ; the gigantic 
slaveries have been of its offspring ; it has ravaged peoples ; 
it has exterminated tribes ; it has ruined empires ; it has 
blasted states ; it has kept the inferior races from develop- 
ing themselves ; it has exterminated children ; it has sub- 
jugated women; it has gone on pillaging and plundering 
as if the whole created world was merely its field of rav- 
age. There is an infernal element in this love. We need 
not speak of a hell hereafter. We need not speak of any 
demoniac regions on the other side of the grave. Why, 
but a few years ago we all lived in hell every day that we 
breathed, and now, hellish beliefs, hellish passions, rule 
over immense portions of the earth. 

The passion for wealth, consider that ! There is love 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 187 

— the love of money. Did anybody ever estimate the 
power, or capacity, or grasp of that ? Did anybody ever 
have enough, though he had a thousand times more than 
he could spend on himself, or than his heart prompted 
him to give away ? To get money by fair means if pos- 
sible, by foul means if necessary, to steal it if it can be 
had in no other manner ; to cheat for it ; to pick it out of 
your neighbor's pocket ; to contrive, and plan, and man- 
age, until what belongs to others comes to you ; to get it 
away from the rich and the poor ; to make others poor in 
order that you may have it; to be content that others 
should continue poor, in abject want, in order that you 
may enjoy it, is not that the commonest experience of the 
present, and of the past also ? And how the endeavor to 
keep it, though it be kept for no end whatever, possesses 
people. The heart grows smaller as the purse grows larger. 
The conscience dwindles as the dividends increase. The 
soul goes down into the dust as the fortune mounts up into 
the air. The more a man has the less he has to give. He 
will see his poor, old, freezing brother suffer from want 
and misery, but he has nothing for him. Vainly the 
widow comes to his door in her need. Vainly the orphans 
call to him that they may be preserved from ruin. Vain- 
ly the poor man, whom fortune has stricken down, pleads 
for a little relief. Here is an ignorant world asking for 
means to teach it, a sorrowing world praying for conso- 
lation. Here are men of science and knowledge who 
have discovered the secret of human prosperity, and want 
but money to set their grand machinery in motion. Vain- 
ly do they go to the man who has millions in his pocket. 
Why, think what happened in Wall street only a few 
weeks ago ! A few men who were enormously rich, fabu- 
lously rich, so rich that they had nothing else to do but to 
get richer, so rich that they wanted all the riches there 



188 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

were, buy up all the gold (why shouldn't they have bought 
up all the cotton, or the iron, or the wool, or the grain ?) 
— buy up all the gold and compel men to purchase of 
them at ruinous prices. The effect was disastrous. 

Two or three weeks ago there came to me a lady, well- 
nurtured and educated, brought up in luxury, refinement 
on her face, dignity in her manner, sweetness in her voice ; 
she said, " Can you do anything to get me a place where 
I can earn a little money to support myself and my chil- 
dren ? " " Have you no husband ? " I said. " Yes, my 
husband was one of the innocent victims of the gold panic 
in Wall street, and is a ruined, broken man ; I have two 
children who must be educated. I must do something. 
Can you help me ? " . 

One week ago to-day I attended the funeral of a man 
of culture and accomplishment. He died by a sudden 
stroke brought on by intense excitement, caused by that 
same crisis, an innocent victim of it. It had first broken 
his mind, then slain his body. There was his widow left 
without his support. There were his three daughters 
standing on the very threshold of their young life. And 
all that was due to nothing else but this infernal love of 
money. For this poverty and wretchedness, for this loss 
of mind and life, those few men were answerable. Did 
they care ? Would they care if they knew it ? Probably 
not ; all they cared for was to amass money, no matter 
what ruin heaped up the pile. 

Take that other love which bears the name of love pre- 
eminently — that instinctive, passionate love which plays 
so large a part in the world. How voracious, how insati- 
able it is ! What abysses of misery it opens ! What 
ravages and wrecks it makes ! I need not describe it to 
you. There is one demonstration of it which, unfortunate- 
ly, we are never allowed to lose sight of. This passion has 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 189 

created a class which is, of all classes in society the most 
pitiable ; a class of women which has always existed, which 
exists now in undiminished numbers, and, for aught that 
any of us can see, will continue to exist for generations 
and generations to come ; a class of women who are the 
despair of society ; whom we do not know what to do with 
or what to do for ; whom law and gospel alike stand aghast 
before ; whom modesty never speaks of and purity never 
thinks of ; whom holiness looks down upon with horror 
and pity turns away from in disgust ; whom even mercy 
hardly dares to compassionate, and philanthrophy is ready 
to abandon the hope that it can help. The utmost that 
society, now so many thousand years old, has learned to 
do for these unfortunates is to draw a line about them, to 
put them under supervision and control, that the poison of 
their infection may not eat too deeply into the heart of 
society. Their life is one game of hypocrisy ; they make 
believe smile out of a cold and dead heart ; counterfeit 
raptures that have long been impossible to them ; imitate 
a love which they do not feel ; pretend to be gay when 
their soul is full of despair. Women they are, doomed to 
early blight, decay, and premature death, unpitied, un- 
blest, unwept for, unprayed for. They haunt the night in 
the cities, proud when they are insulted, and only grateful 
when their womanhood is scorned ; a class of unfortunates 
— so unfortunate that every heart bleeds to think of them 
— victims of this all-devouring passion ; may we not say 
priestesses, sad priestesses, who sacrifice themselves on this 
frightful altar ; nay, march into the fire to be burned, that 
society may be spared the ruin, the devastation, and the 
shame which this consuming flame would otherwise cause. 
Is there not an infernal element here ! Is there no hell 
here ? Walking about in our streets, living in adjacent 
houses often, a hell so deep, so utter, so black that no poet 



100 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

like Milton has ever been able to paint it, no theologian 
like Jonathan Edwards has ever been powerful enough to 
describe it. 

This is the infernal love; a love that is altogether 
exorbitant, that overflows all uses and all needs in every 
direction. It does not and can not control itself. Unless 
there were some controlling force, some counteracting 
feeling, it would bring the race to destruction. But here 
comes in the merciful provision of Providence. To 
balance the centripetal power which always seeks self, 
there is provided the centrifugal force that throws the 
spirit out among mankind. To counteract the selfish 
force is the human force. Over against the all-devouring 
love is the all-embracing and beneficent love of heaven. 

What, then, are these forces that I comprehend under 
the term the celestial love ? God has garnered them up 
in institutions. 

The first of these is the institution of marriage; a 
divine institution grounded in the nature of things, 
instituted in the laws of human nature, sanctified by all 
that is purest, sweetest, and best in human life, and de- 
manded by the exigencies of human society. The object 
of this institution is to hold mankind together. It takes 
a little group of people, the man, the woman, the brother, 
the sister, children, and holds them by a bond that can not 
be dissolved ; compels them, as it were, by their love for 
one another, to deny themselves for the sake of those they 
live with. The strong must help the weak. The weak 
may lean on the strong. The wise must teach the foolish. 
The simple may come for advice and counsel to the wise. 
The man and the woman complement each other. The 
great and the little live by mutual support. One common 
bond exercises such a control over the members of this 
outer world that whatever difference may exist in age, 



THE INFERNAL AND TEE CELESTIAL LOVE. 191 

taste, culture, disposition, temperament, they are still vir- 
tually, to all appearances and to all designs, one person. 
This is the intent of marriage, to educate in humanity. 
There must be self-denial ; patience is imperative. There 
is a great deal to bear and forbear, and it is made indis- 
pensable. Woe be unto those who would break up or 
weaken this institution of God ! Woe be unto those who, 
in the interest of an animal individualism, would disin- 
tegrate this fine communion ! "Woe be unto those who 
preach the gospel of instinct, passion, desire, who pro- 
claim the philosophy of elective affinities, teach the sanc- 
tity of impulse, the authority of caprice, and say that what 
men have a right to, and all they need to insist on, is 
that they shall enjoy themselves, at whatever expense to 
society. They who seek to undermine this institution, or 
who disseminate views that are fatal to it, think they are re- 
moving a superficial disadvantage and sorrow. They are 
striving to beget a permanent disadvantage and a sorrow 
that the world will never cease deploring. They are 
defeating the great providences of God. They are up- 
heaving the basis of society. They are doing away with 
that fine moral and personal education which is indis- 
pensable to the training of men and women in courtesy 
and kindness, in free charity and brotherly love. We 
know very well and admit very sadly that the system does 
not work perfectly. What system does ? We know very 
well that marriage is often an occasion for tyranny and 
selfishness. We know very well that there may be 
despotism in the home, with misery, fretting, suffering, 
sorrow, more to bear than can be borne, more to forbear 
than can be done. We feel all the time how infinitely 
far this divine institution is from accomplishing its per- 
fect end. Do we not know that wives are wretched, that 
husbands are untrue, that children are neglected, are 



192 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

spoiled, left without training, in ignorance and willful- 
ness? Do we not know that sorrows are engendered 
there which nothing apparently can heal ? And yet we 
all know that, if there is any sweetness in human life, it 
is due in a large measure to this institution of marriage. 
It is the parent of the best comfort, the sweetest luxury, 
the most permanent and satisfactory content that the 
world enjoys. There are homes that are heavens. There 
is paradise at the feet of mothers and fathers. There is 
education and training in all nobleness within the four 
domestic walls, and there is not much of this outside of 
them. There are examples of dignity and elevation and 
even saintliness there which stand at the top of all human 
experience. The mother bending over her sick child to 
save its life, giving up everything, forsaking the world, 
watching all night, anxious all day, toiling and anguish- 
ing continually that the spark of life may be kept in that 
little frame — is still the type of the purest disinterested- 
ness that men have imagined. And the picture of a 
father bearing with his misbehaving son, watching for 
him, praying for him, thinking of him when he has gone 
astray, waiting for him to come back, seeing him from 
afar, running to him, throwing his arms about his neck 
and kissing the poor prodigal, putting the best ring on his 
finger, shoes on his feet, fresh garments on his wasted and 
haggard form, and telling men Jo kill the fatted calf and 
feast, because he is returned safe and sound, — why, it is 
the image of the parental providence itself! Christ 
could think of nothing more divine than that. When we 
see parents, as we sometimes do, caring for some poor 
child to whom they have given birth, and to whom life 
has been only a weariness and a sorrow, trying to make it 
easier for him, to smooth his way, to furnish occupation 
for his hands, to give some pleasure to his heart, to open 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 193 

little glimpses of a better world to his anticipation ; when 
we see how the heart softens and sweetens, how passions 
become chastened and the mind becomes subdued, how 
meekness and patience and loveliness steal into the spirit, 
then we say God bless the institution that can so trans- 
figure weakness, and want, and pain, and sorrow, and can 
make our poor dependent human nature come so near to 
heaven even in the hardest experiences of earth ! 

I know that the discipline of the home is not always 
wise ; that the relation of marriage is sometimes narrow- 
ing. The household is limited. It is a small group. It 
is so in the nature of things. "We all know very well that 
men and women become so interested in their homes, in 
building up their families, caring for the wants of their 
own little circle, that they forget the large world outside. 
Certainly. It must be so. Marriage is not the only insti- 
tution in the world. It is not the only educator that there 
is. If Providence had stopped here, we might object 
that marriage was an insufficient institution. It is. But 
it is supplemented by another, and this other, the next 
institution by which God tries to check, control, and edu- 
cate this selfish, passionate nature of ours, is the institu- 
tion of Society. 

We do not make society. It is not a manufacture. It 
is not a device of human wit and wisdom. It is not 
something that we have invented and set going, a machine 
that we wind up and allow to run. It is an organic crea- 
ture, the growth of ages. It is a being, indeed, made up 
of all beings together. It has its roots deep down in the 
past. Its branches spread wide in the heavens of the 
future. It is so comprehensive that it embraces every 
rational creature from the top to the bottom of our life. 
"Who is so great as to transcend it % . Who is so little as to 
be out of its reach ? The greatest depends upon the 

9 



19 i THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

smallest. There is no emperor, king, or queen, no noble 
or prince, no magnate, no millionaire, financier, banker, 
no great genius in literature, no great poet or historian, 
no intellect however vast, no soul however tender, that is 
not indebted to the smallest and meanest creature that 
crawls upon the face of the earth. The emperor on his 
throne is dependent upon the ditcher, the delver, the 
drudge, upon the mason, the carpenter, the builder, the 
farmer who holds the land, the tiller of the ground. 
There is no queen in her robes of state who is not in- 
debted to the poor sewing woman in her garret, passing 
her days and nights singing in her heart the dreary song 
of work. And, again, there is none of these, no poor 
woman, no sad-eyed, broken-hearted girl, no ditcher, 
no drudge, no delver, that is not every day dependent 
upon the great and high ones who sit above. The atmos- 
phere of genius finds its way to them. The soul of good- 
ness reaches down into their darkness, and the spirits that 
dwell nearest the eternal throne pass their air and sun- 
shine down to these roots that live below the ground. 

Let any man try to get away from society if he can. 
Let any man try to fly in the face of society, and see how 
instantly he is ground into the dust. Nay, let society try 
to get rid of any portion of its own organic structure, and 
then see what ruin and devastation ensue. Society is one 
living, vital, organic structure, with veins spreading out 
in every part, with great arteries swelling with red cur- 
rents of blood. There it is, living and beating with the 
very spirit of the Eternal in it all the time. It does not 
do its work perfectly. Its intention is to overcome the 
selfish desires of men by making them love their neighbor, 
feel how closely they are bound in with others, help the 
helpless, teach the simple, lift up those who are cast down, 
serve those who are above them, offer their tribute to the 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 195 

noble and the good, make their contribution to the intel- 
lectual, the moral, or the material wealth of mankind. 
That is the purpose of it — a purpose to educate men, to 
discipline them, to subdue their weaknesses, their levity, 
and their foolishness. It does not do it. Society is full 
of anarchy. It is full of wretched spirits who wish to 
tear it in pieces. Nay, the very structure of society, the 
very fact that it is so closely woven together, gives the 
opportunity that rude, lawless, and violent spirits need to 
make their own advantages out of their fellow-men. On 
this very account the tyrant is able to spread his dominion 
so widely. On this very account the despot is able to 
shake the earth as he does. Because the web is so fine, a 
violent finger will tear it to pieces. But then, much that 
is noblest in us owes its training to this very structure of 
society. The patriot is its offspring. The philanthropist 
is its child. The worthy citizen is its common creature, 
and the men who labor that the world may be better — 
the reformers who are ready to lay down their lives for 
the good of their fellow-men — are born out of this respect 
for fellow-men. Just as often as anarchy rises and tries 
to tear the social fabric in pieces, the fine web forms again, 
and the great work goes slowly on. 

A few days ago a man died in London who illustrated 
simply and beautifully this truth. He was not born to 
wealth, or comfort, or luxury, or high estate. He made 
his way upward by his own efforts. He was a lonely man, 
unmarried, with never wife or children, with few near 
kindred ; he worked by himself, and by his patient work- 
ing amassed an enormous fortune. Many, in his case, 
thus alone, self-sufficient and self-dependent, would have 
been satisfied to live aloue and to exalt themselves at the 
expense of others. They would have become hoarders of 
wealth — what we call misers. They would have contracted 



196 . THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

themselves more and more, forgetting neighbors, oblivions 
of human obligations, and doing nothing of that duty 
which is incumbent upon every man and woman who lives 
in the modern world. But this man remembered that he 
was but one member of the family of mankind. He remem- 
bered that he had a duty to perform and a debt to discharge. 
He knew that his wealth came from the labors of the work- 
ing class, and he tried to give back to the working class a 
portion of the benefit that they had conferred upon him, by 
building, in the heart of London, more comfortable homes 
for them to live in. America, by continuing to be America, 
to reward his faith in her had poured enormous wealth 
into his lap ; having the wealth, he remembered America 
in her time of need, and poured it back into her bosom, 
that America might be richer, that her untaught millions 
might be taught, and that a better civilization might be 
started and established in the southern land. Say what 
you may about the wisdom of his charities and the suc- 
cess of his benificences, we can not forget that he accepted 
and fulfilled this mission, that the mere fact of his being 
a member of society overcame his selfishness, drew him 
out of his loneliness, warmed his heart, enlarged his sym- 
pathies, strengthened the bonds that bound him to his 
fellow-men ; and now his memory is in all minds, his 
name is spoken in humble gratitude by the lowliest and the 
loftiest lips. A Queen sheds tears as he dies. His statue 
stands in bronze in the great city of London ; carved out 
of grateful memories and pure affections his statue stands 
in the niche which every good heart has for those who 
love their fellow-men. 

One thought more is necessary to complete what I have 
to say. The education of the family is limited. So is 
that of the State. In both there is room for great selfish- 
ness, for tyranny, despotism, and violence. Another edu- 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 197 

cator is needed. Men must learn to love each other, not 
as members of the same household, of the same town, 
city, tribe, state, or nation, but as members of the same 
great human family. This love alone can be purely dis- 
interested. The family love is selfish within its limits. 
Social love is within its limits selfish. We know well 
how in the State the politician may produce disorganiza- 
tion ; how in society those who hate one another or who 
mean to plunder one another have abundant opportunity. 
Selfishness is not eradicated by these institutions, and so 
God plants another. It is the Church. The church rep- 
resents fellowship on the simple ground of humanity ; the 
Church is not American or French, Roman or English, 
it is simply the Church. It is not for the poor or the 
rich, for the wise or the simple, for the great or the small ; 
it is for everybody. The Church knows no differences 
between men, but only one fundamental resemblance. It 
speaks of the one God and Father of all ; of the Christ 
who is the brother, the friend, the sympathizer, the ser- 
vant of all ; of the common lot, the common origin, the 
common destiny, the common birth, the common heaven, 
the common need, the common suffering, the common 
sorrow, the common consolation and redemption. The 
Church speaks simply of man — not of man and woman, 
but of man — mankind. Its symbol is the communion. 
Think of the first communion supper. Think of those 
twelve men ' seated around a table with their Master. 
There was John, the intense, passionate, morbid enthusi- 
ast and seer. There was Peter, the organizer, the practi- 
cal man, the man of simple common-sense, whose name 
is associated with the Church of Rome. There was James, 
the ritualist, the formalist, the priest of the early church, 
the man who wore the priestly robes and went through 
the form of granting absolution to the people, the man 



198 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 

who stood for ordinances and sacraments. There was 
Judas, the business man, who carried the bag. Then there 
was Matthew, and the rest of the disciples who left no 
mark whatever in history — simple men, stupid, ignorant, 
who had no comprehension of their Master whatever, and 
who were ready to run away when danger came. There 
they all sat, and among them the great Christ, sweet, se- 
rene, and benign, breaking his bread for all of them to 
eat, giving the cup that he tasted to all of them to drink, 
blessing them all alike, pronouncing upon all his peace. 
The symbol is never realized, never fulfilled. Can we 
ever dare to hope it will be fulfilled ? The Church has 
never done its duty. It has never tried fully to do its 
duty. In fact, by generating an aristocracy of its own, 
an aristocracy of believers, a family of the elect, a select 
class of the devout, it has done what it could to break 
up the human family. And yet, here and there, in little 
spots about in different parts of the world, you will find 
these simple, scattered groups of men and women meet- 
ing together without distinction of lot or of person, and 
bound together by a love so simple, sweet, tender, and 
strong that all the hostility of the world can not drive 
them asunder. Imperfect as the work of the Church has 
been, it has still held up its sign, the sign of the commu- 
nion, the sign of the cross, the sign of the dove. Still it 
has spoken of the great All-Father ; still of the Christ, 
the one Brother of all ; still of the great Heaven that 
opens to all the immortal destiny. 

Slow and long and weary is the process of educating 
man out of his selfishness — hard and laborious beyond our 
telling or conceiving. But it is done — feebly, imperfectly, 
gradually, by slow and tedious stages. The time will 
come when each one of these divine institutions will ful- 
fill its end more gloriously than it has yet, and, as it does, 



THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 199 

each will prepare its way for the next, until at last we 
shall have on the earth a society — a society of men and 
women who are brothers and sisters, mutually dependent 
and mutually faithful, mutually loving, serving, and bless- 
ing ; then the prayer of Jesus will be answered : " Ma^ 
thy kingdom come, may thy will be done on Earth as it 
is in Heaven." 



XII. 
THE IMMOKTALITIES OF MAN. 

This mortal must put on immortality. — 1 Cor. xv. 53. 

OF all the great religious ideas, none has been so un- 
worthily treated as the idea of immortality. Of all 
its grand legends, none has been so meanly interpreted 
by Christendom as the resurrection. It is popularly re- 
garded as a matter of bones and blood. It is read as the 
story of a mortal who renewed his mortality, rather than 
of a mortal who put immortality on. The point of sig- 
nificance in it, indeed the solid proof of it, is made to 
consist in the ability' of the risen man to eat " a piece of 
broiled fish and an honeycomb." 

Fairly considered, the New Testament does not record 
the physical resurrection of Jesus as a body, but his spirit- 
ual resurrection as a power of life in the soul. Thus Paul 
— the first witness and the great preacher of the resurrec- 
tion — taught it. But even supposing the corporeal resur- 
rection of Jesus to be recorded and to be true, that was 
not of the first importance. More than one resurrection 
of nobler import has Jesus had in history. There was a 
resurrection in thought, when, rising in the mind of Chris- 
tendom, he stood a being of light, glorifying the barren 
spaces of speculation as the central figure in a new the- 
ology. Another resurrection he experienced in Art, when, 
as a new ideal of spiritual beauty, he enchanted the souls 



TEE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 201 

of Raffaelle and Titian and Da Yinci, and through them 
fascinated the modern world. Again he rose as the image 
of moral perfection, showing the heavenliness of purity, 
patience, peace, humility, aspiration, to the children of a 
coarse and cruel age. And yet once more, as a vision of 
tenderness, pity, compassion, and utter kindness, as the 
spiritual brother of mankind, he came out from the grave 
of a kindless past, and showed men how they should live 
with one another. A great soul has many immortalities ; 
they increase in grandeur as its history unfolds and the 
spheres of power open before it. The corruptible puts on 
more than one form of incorruption, and the mortal robes 
itself in resurrection garments of manv hues. 

When often asked if I believe in the immortalitv of the 
soul, I am tempted to reply : " It is precisely in that I do 
believe. It is the sum of all my convictions. Believing 
that, it is hardly necessary to say what else I cling to. I 
believe not so much in the soul's immortality as in the 
soul's immortalities." The difficulty of talking on this 
subject arises from its depth and extent. We hardly know 
where to begin ; we never know where to end. There is 
so much to say, that it sometimes seems best to say 
nothing, lest one should be misapprehended. But I will 
try to say something intelligible on this great theme, 
about which so much that is unintelligible has been said, 
and which yet is unexhausted. Let us consider three or four 
of the ways in which our mortal puts on immortality. 

I. In the first place, there is a sense in which the body 
is immortal. Not the ancient, orthodox, and generally 
approved sense ; that is abandoned by thinking men. The 
doctrine of the Church has always been that, at the last 
day, the identical bodies of men and women shall be 
raised for judgment. Augustine said : " Every man's 
body, howsoever dispersed, shall be restored perfect in the 



202 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN, 

resurrection, complete in quantity and quality. The hairs 
that have been cut off, the nails that have been clipped, 
shall return ; not in such quantities as to produce deform- 
ity, but in substance as they grew." Dr. Gardiner Spring, 
but lately deceased, wrote : " Whether buried in the earth, 
or floating in the sea, or consumed by the flames, or en- 
riching the battle-field, or evaporate in the atmosphere, 
all, from Adam to the latest born, shall wend their way to 
the great arena of the judgment. Every perished bone 
and every secret particle of dust shall obey the summons 
and come forth." One Church Father held that the teeth 
were providentially made eternal, to serve as the seeds of 
the resurrection. Others opined that the resurrection 
body would be in the shape of a ball, like the head of a 
cherub. According to an old rabbinical tradition, a small, 
almond-shaped bone, called the ossiculum luz, formed the 
nucleus round which the organic elements would gather, 
or the germ from which they would be developed in the 
resurrection. This bone, they fancied, was indestructible; 
no pounding on anvils with steel hammers, no burning in 
fiery furnaces, no soaking in powerful solvents, threatened 
it with demolition or touched it with decay. It was incor- 
ruptible and immortal. Modern speculation has enter- 
tained a similar fancy. 

The author of a curious book, called " The Physical 
Theory of Another Life," imagines that the body may 
contain some imperishable particle in which the soul has 
its seat — a particle imponderable and imperceptible, which, 
when the gross elements of the body decompose, assumes 
a higher life and evolves a nobler organization. Leigh 
Hunt, in his charming book, " The Eeligion of the Heart," 
indulges some such dream. " Physiologists tell us," 
he says, " that the vital knot of the nerves is no bigger 
than a pin's head. "Who shall say of what size is the knot 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 203 

of the knot, — the life and soul of the life itself, that 
which receives all our sensations, and acts upon them and 
thinks ? " 

Modern chemistry, which is supreme in the realm of 
matter, which resolves the subtle air into its constituent 
elements and takes the light to pieces, brushes such no- 
tions away as idle fancies. Nothing ethereal eludes its 
grasp. The " spiritual body " it cannot see must be at- 
tenuated indeed ! Chemistry says : Not thus is the body 
immortal, but rather in a fashion conceived by most men 
to be fatal to the very idea of its immortality. It is de- 
composed ; it passes into the elements ; it dissolves and es- 
capes in air ; it mingles with the productive agencies of the 
ground, and reappears in leaves and plants. It is glorified 
in the grass that is green on the grave, and the wild flow- 
ers that make living the meadow. The soft garments of 
the spring are the resurrection robes of thousands of 
mortal forms. Science preaches eloquently the persistency, 
the indestructibility of force. Our bodies are magazines 
of power ; and when the " silver cord is loosed " that 
binds the frame together, the emancipated force takes 
other shape, flows in new directions, and performs fresh 
work. The death of the body is its transformation ; the 
dissolution of the body is its discharge to new offices. It 
escapes from vault and coffin ; it baffles the worm, and, 
without displacing stone or sod, becomes ethereal, and 
floats away. 

The belief, if it be nothing more, is tranquillizing and 
pleasant. It may make no one more thoughtful or regard- 
ful of the body that is reserved for such fine transfigura- 
tions ; it may teach none to respect the frame so sweetly 
predestined : but it should have power to disarm the grave 
of its merely loathsome terrors ; it should, to some degree, 
purify the charnel-house, expelling the phantoms of mould 



204 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

and rot, arid placing white angels in the spot where the 
dead body had lain. This idea of fleshly immortality should 
relieve us of our disgusts, and make us think more amia- 
bly, if it cannot make us think more lovingly, of Death — 
the angel that can spiritualize our much-abused and often 
grievously insulted dust. The first step towards gaining 
a complete victory over death will be to think more sweetly 
of its processes. If with our clod it deals so tenderly, the 
dealing will surely be no less tender with what we respect 
more. Superstition demands the resurrection of the cor- 
poreal man, that he may appear in very person to be 
judged and punished. Reason prefers to think of the 
corporeal man's dissolution as the release of the body from 
its duty. It is consoled and elevated by the thought that 
Nature loves the particles of even the vilest body, and 
when its temporary possessor has done brutalizing it, will 
kindly change it into forms of loveliness all her own. 

II. A nobler immortality is that we have in the memory 
of those that love us. It is more than figuratively true 
that we live in one another. With very many the in- 
ward being consists more in others' lives than in their own. 
If there be a human creature who is wholly unloved ; who 
has no affections, or possesses no power of gaining affec- 
tions ; who touches his neighbors as one particle of sand 
touches another, at the hard surface, never blending or 
mingling : if there be a human creature whom no wife 
clings to, no brother or sister cherishes, no child reveres or 
blesses, no friend confides in, no neighbor looks up to with 
admiration or reposes on with trust — such a creature knows 
nothing of the immortality I speak of. But few, if any, 
are as unfortunate as this, and none need be. Organic 
ties bind most of us to more persons than one ; and if 
organic ties do not, ties of mutual service, of sympathy 
and tenderness, do. It is seldom, indeed, that one dies 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 205 

leaving none bereaved. Seldom, indeed, does one die and 
not leave himself behind, a power of sadness or gladness 
in other hearts for years — a presence visible to the mind's 
eye, tangible to the heart's feeling, absent never by day, 
and often disturbing sleep by dreams — a presence that 
cannot be banished ; for it is part and portion of the 
mind itself, that we would not banish if we could for 
worlds. 

If the child of few years, the infant of few months, have 
no other immortality, it has a very dear and blessed one 
in" the heavenly heart of its mother — an immortality of 
light ineffable, to which comes no shadow, in which is no 
doubt or fear or imperfection — an immortality that deepens 
in grace and glory as long as her consciousness endures. 
The baby taken from her arms is transfigured in her bosom. 
Seeing it no more, no more holding it in her lap, she talks 
with it and smiles with it, sits with it in the nursery, ram- 
bles with it over the fields, prattles foolish fancies to it, 
drops asleep with it nestling in her breast, and wakes to see 
its little face looking down upon her. It was flesh of her 
flesh, and bone of her bone ; it is thought of her thought, 
feeling of her feeling, and life of ^her life. Before it left 
her womb, it stirred unutterable longings, opened new 
fountains of hope, whispered bright promises of happi- 
ness ; no sooner did it appear, than a new world within 
her was ready to welcome it — a world that the expectation 
of the new-comer had prepared. From week to week, 
through the period of its dependence on her, the stranger 
had been enlarging, uplifting, softening and enriching her 
nature, making her a sweeter and better woman ; and each 
new thought or feeling is associated, is identified, with the 
image of the young Messiah, who preached the kingdom of 
heaven, and brought it. When he goes away, is all that 
lost? No, indeed, it remains; the child remains — always 



206 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

to her thought a child, though her thought becomes 
feeble and her memory of many another pleasant thing 
fails. 

An old man, a physician, who called himself an Atheist, 
lost his son — his only boy — a youth of fine character and 
promise. To the question whether he believed him to be 
still living, he replied : " Yes, in me ; in my heart he lives ; 
and as long as I have thought and feeling, he will have 
thought and feeling in me. When I cease to be conscious, 
he will die." To few people, perhaps, will the thought of 
such an immortality be satisfying, but to none should it be 
unimpressive. It suggests a life after death that, though 
impersonal, is genuine and real, the hope whereof should 
be stimulating. To live in another, in several others pos- 
sibly — to live as a precious memory, a pleasant thought, a 
kindling anticipation, a sweet solace, an example of good- 
ness, a help to virtue, — is surely to live a very real exist- 
ence, far more real than most people dream of when they 
dream of heaven. To live so is worth praying for and work- 
ing for. This kind of life may be more effectual than the 
life in the body was. The dead mother often sways her 
child more than the living mother did ; the imagination, 
quickened by sorrow, working mightily to ~G.x impressions 
which the actual word or look could not secure. To be 
allowed to live thus in her child's future, the mother would 
gladly relinquish her hope of an everlasting future for her- 
self. This immortality, at all events, may be assured : 
those who love us will remember us — alas ! when we wish 
they might forget. That which has, for better or worse, 
become an organic portion of being cannot be obliterated. 
Whether its quality there be the quality of the angel or 
the fiend — whether our immortality in the hearts of those 
who love us be an immortality of bane or bliss — it is inev- 
itable. Though the bane or the bliss be ours in anticipa- 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 207 

tion only, though we neither suffer the one nor delight in 
the other, the anticipation of it alone should make us lead 
nobler lives. If the prospect of misery or happiness for 
ourselves hereafter is enough to sober or inspire us, how 
much more should we be sobered and inspired by the 
thought that when we are gone, we may be the cause of 
life-long misery or happiness to those that love us better 
than we ever loved ourselves ! 

III. A grander kind of immortality yet — grander, 
though less affecting — is that we have in humanity. We 
live in humanity; we are vitally connected with it as 
members. The human race is an organic being, that lives 
and grows from age to age, animated by one spirit, actu- 
ated by one power. " !No one liveth to himself, and no 
man dieth to himself." Standing midway between those 
that have gone before and those that are to follow after 
him, he receives and transmits the qualities that build up 
the social world. Existence is a process of receiving and 
giving. In us live the fathers ; in the children we shall 
live forever — every atom of our nature being taken up, 
absorbed, worked over, as material for the coming man. 
As Lessing puts it: "The immortality of souls is indis- 
solubly associated with the development of the race. We 
who live are not only the offspring of those who have 
lived before us, we are really of their substance ; and it is 
thus that we are immortals, living forever." 

This idea has, for thousands of years, been rooted in the 
world. Traces of it are found in the ancient religions. It 
was hinted at in the Egyptian doctrine of transmigration ; 
it was conveyed in the Indian doctrine of absorption ; the 
Chinese acknowledged it in their worship of ancestors. 
The ancient Hebrews, previous to the captivity, seem to 
have known no other doctrine of immortality than this. 
The dying Hebrew was said to be " gathered to his fathers ; " 



208 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

and, as he passed away, the thought last in his mind was 
of the posterity in whom he should continue to live. The 
Hebrew's prayer was for long life and for children and 
grandchildren — generations who should transmit his vir- 
tues, and call him. blessed. His kingdom of heaven was 
on earth ; his dream of eternity was the glorious future of 
his race. 

Gleams of the same belief shine through Pythagoras 
and Plato and other sages of the old world. This is the 
belief of the Positivists of our own time. They cherish 
no hope of private immortality ; that they describe as the 
fond anticipation of egotistical minds. They have much 
to say about living again in those that shall succeed them 
— about making a contribution to the happiness of their 
posterity — adding something to the capacity, skill or virtue 
of the coming time — leaving behind works that may fol- 
low them ; as they have entered into the labors of others, 
they would make it worth while for others to enter into 
theirs, consoled by the knowledge that no fragment of liv- 
ing bread will be wasted, that no accent of the Holy Ghost 
will be lost. 

The great master of this school declares that for every 
true man there are two forms of existence ; the one tem- 
poral and conscious, the other unconscious but eternal ; 
the one involving the presence of a body which perishes, 
the other involving the action only of intellect and heart 
which cannot die — the latter alone worthy to be called 
that noble immortality of the soul after which the best 
aspire. To his female companion — who complains that 
such an immortality appals her, by giving to her a sense 
of insignificance that reduces her to nothing, and who begs 
to have revived in her a feeling of her own individual ex- 
istence — the master replies, that the Great Being, 
Humanity, cannot act except through individual agents ; 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 209 

the collective life is but the result of the free concurrence 
of the efforts of simple individuals ; all are nothing with- 
out each one, and each one, while embodied and con- 
scious, may feel himself to be an indispensable part of the 
living whole ; each is predestinated, and each is useful ; 
each has a message, because each is sent. In the same 
strain another writer of great power : " Whatever 
happiness we derive from pure regard to our fellow-beings, 
and from satisfaction in the general welfare, will cling to 
us as long as we are capable of entertaining it ; and what- 
ever deeds we do, not ' in the flesh,' for the gratification 
of self, but ' in the spirit,' for the love of God and man- 
kind, we may know to be as immortal in their nature as 
God and mankind are immortal." 

There is the conception— it must be confessed, a very 
impressive one to the calm, brave mind. For thirty years 
this gospel of immortality has been eloquently preached, 
not without effect. It has taken strong hold, not on the 
intellectual and passionless only, but on the working- 
people of intelligence in Europe, who have thrown off 
Christianity and discarded faith in a personal God. It is 
a belief that deserves consideration and respect from all 
who consider the claims of truth, and from all who respect 
the serious convictions of earnest men. If it is not to be 
lightly accepted, it is not to be lightly ridiculed, for it 
contains the elements of great power. 

The heartiest objection to it is, perhaps, its heartiest 
recommendation. It effectually destroys egotism, that 
taint in the common belief ; it gives no encouragement to 
the selfish wish for a happiness purely personal ; grants no 
indulgence to the longing for a heaven of idle rest or un- 
earned recreation ; rebukes the rash claim for private and 
unmerited rewards ; says to men, avaricious of crowns 
and thrones in the hereafter, what Jesus said to the am- 



210 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

bitious youths who asked for seats at the right hand and 
left hand of his throne : " What yon ask is not mine to 
give." If pure disinterestedness be noble, then this 
doctrine has a character of supreme nobility ; for it re- 
quires the renunciation of every interested or covetous 
passion ; it bids men labor for what they shall never share, 
and fight for what they shall never enjoy. To any but 
the earnest, loving and self-sacrificing it is cold and dreary ; 
but to these it is inspiring and grand. 

The doctrine is human, purely human — human in its 
very texture. It rests on the fact of human fellowship ; 
it derives its vitality from the power of the sympathetic 
feelings : love — deep, unselfish, consecrating love, for 
human beings as such, for human beings, unrelated, 
unknown, unborn — is its animating principle ; the love of 
duty is its strength ; the faithf nl ministry of mutual ser- 
vice is its living pledge and bond. It is nothing without 
others, many others, all others ; its grandeur consists in the 
solemn perpetuity of that eternal Being called Man, 
whose existence rolls on through the ages, gathering might 
as it rolls, swelled by the great and little tributaries — 
the rivers and rivulets, the brooks and tiny brooklets, 
that add their rushing volumes or their trickling drops as 
it pours along. 

The doctrine is spiritual. Rightly apprehended, it is 
the only purely spiritual doctrine that is entertained ; for 1 '* 
puts out of sight altogether, and utterly abolishes, the c 
sideration of " mine " and " thine." The spiritual far 
is the faculty of living in ideas, truths, laws ; the spiritual 
glory is the glory that comes of so living ; the spiritual 
being is the being who lives " not for himself alone," not 
for his private enjoyment or satisfaction or development, 
but for that which is a great deal more than himself, for 
that which is not phenomenal and passing, but stable and 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 211 

permanent, which will live when he is no more, the glory 
whereof he can increase and in a measure create, though 
in it he is absorbed. Lucifer forfeited his spirituality by 
setting up for himself. His brethren preserved theirs by 
their meek surrender to the perfect "Will. As the spirit- 
uality of God consists, not in his being bodiless, but in 
his being self-renouncing — as a God who made the end of 
the universe to be his own glory would be precisely the 
reverse of spiritual — so is he the seeker of a spiritual im- 
mortality who desires to live in others' future more than 
in his own. 

The doctrine has its fine inspiration too. The first 
aspect of it sends a chill to the heart. The ordinary man 
or woman feels annihilated by it. What is the ocean's 
debt f o the drop of water ? What is the sun's debt to a 
candle ? What effect has a summer shower to sweeten the 
bitterness of an Atlantic or Pacific sea ? How shall the 
planet feel the leverage of my little finger ? What contri- 
bution is my faint breathing to the mighty blasts of truth 
and conscience that must blow the vessel of humanity on- 
ward ? This doctrine of immortality in the race may an- 
swer for a Buddha or a Moses, a Jesus or a Paul ; it may 
satisfy a Pythagoras, a Socrates, a Plato ; the Augustines 
and Luthers, the Xaviers, St. Bernards and Fenelons may 
rejoice in it ; Dante and Milton, Shakespeare and Lessing, 
may press it to their bosoms ; Mozart and Beethoven, 
Handel and Mendelssohn, may wish nothing better ; Leib- 
nitz and Bacon, Newton and Galileo, may dwell on it with 
rapture ; it may fill the dream of Raffaelle, Angelo, Da 
Yinci ; for their great lives poured into the ocean of hu- 
manity as the waters of the Mississippi pour into the Gulf, 
as the waters of the Orinoco pour into the Atlantic, 
heaving up the level of the sea, and thrusting its pur- 
ple current miles from the shore. They who are con- 



212 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

scions of vast power can rejoice in great influence : but 
those who are conscious only of great weakness can promise 
themselves no such recognition, and must droop for lack 
of inducement. 

If recognition were demanded, if an immortality of fame 
were the immortality coveted, this objection would be fatal, 
for the famous are the few. The mass are soon forgotten, 
living but a little while in the memory of their friends. But 
fame does not always follow influence. Many a great 
benefactor is scarcely remembered even by name. Many 
are quite unknown. The mass of mankind make humani- 
ty, not the few ; the multitude of the lowly and worthy 
decide what the future of society shall be. He who con- 
tributes a life of simple truth, sets an example of daily 
honesty, makes a happy home, trains his children well, is 
a loyal friend and a good citizen, practices the greatest du- 
ties in the smallest way — does more to augment the sum 
of moral power in the world than any artist, however ad- 
mirable, any poet, however sublime, or any genius, how- 
ever inventive. The doctrine of immortality in the race 
is peculiarly encouraging to the humble, earnest toilers, 
the unprivileged and ungifted ; for their contributions are 
just what they choose to make them, and what they add is 
that w r hich is most indispensable to the common good. 
We are not surprised, therefore, to learn that this doctrine 
is especially popular among the artisans, who know that 
all they can contribute is industry, patience, fidelity, intel- 
ligent skill, temperance, prudence, economy, but who 
know, as none others do, that these qualities are precisely 
what humanity needs in its struggle for life. 

IY. I have spoken at some length on this view of the im- 
mortal life, because it is unfamiliar, and because it is mis- 
understood. I have spoken earnestly because I could not 
speak at length ; the words had to be vivid because they 



TEE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 213 

had to be few. But I leave it, now, to say something on 
that other form of immortality — the personal, individual 
immortality — which is the hope of so many millions of 
mankind, which is, in fact, the only form of immortality 
by most people thought worth considering. The belief in 
conscious immortality has a strong hold on the human 
race. It is ancient, though there were times when it did 
not exist. It is widely spread, though there have been 
people who did not entertain it. All men do not believe 
it, and cannot. All do not desire it, life not being so rich 
to all that they would continue it if they could. All do not 
hope for it ; for there are those who think the hope auda- 
cious and extravagant. All dare not claim it, there being 
not a few modest souls who cannot think themselves or 
their neighbors worthy of so inestimable a privilege as that 
of renewed existence. This life, they say, is more than we 
can manage ; it would be worse than rash to demand ano- 
ther and a longer one. Such will actually resist the argu- 
ments that are urged in favor of their falling heirs to such 
an overwhelming estate. 

But such considerations do not affect greatly the moral 
consciousness of mankind. Most men — all men, at some 
periods — live in their feelings ; and their feelings all twine 
round this column of personal immortality, as the vine 
clings to its upright trellis. The instinctive love of life 
abhors death, protests against dissolution, insists on contin- 
uance. Living man cannot think annihilation ; he can 
only think life. Thinking man cannot conceive of thought 
as ceasing, and in the activity of his mind finds prophecy 
of endless intellectual progress. Loving man cannot bring 
himself to believe that the objects of his affection are gone 
from him forever, or that he shall ever lack objects to love. 
The deathlessness of the beloved seems to be an axiom to 
the heart. Earnest, aspiring man, feels certain that he shall 



214 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

be allowed time to fulfill his dream and attain his perfec- 
tion. Then, too, we are persons : each one of us says Tf 
and, when he says it, feels himself to be an indestructible 
monad, a separate entity, a solid thing, that he remembers 
as having persisted through a changeable past, that he is 
sure persists now, and that he cannot persuade himself 
will cease to persist through any changes that may befall. 
All this is instinctive. Reasoning has little or nothing to 
do with the assurance. In fact, the more we reason about 
it, the weaker it is. " The only occasions," says a sincere 
writer, " on which a shade of doubt has passed over my 
conviction of a future existence, has been when I have 
rashly endeavored to make out a case, to give a reason for 
the faith that is in me, to assign ostensible and logical 
grounds for my belief. At such times a chill dismay has 
often struck into my heart, and a fluctuating darkness has 
lowered down upon my creed, to be dissipated only when 
I had left inferenee and induction far behind, and once 
more suffered the soul to take counsel with itself." 

The strength of the faith lies in these elemental feelings, 
in what Theodore Parker calls the " consciousness of 
immortality." The so-called "proofs" derive all their 
force from these persuasions. The " evidences " are pre- 
texts, apologies, excuses ; the u arguments " are illustra- 
tions ; they convince none but the already convinced. 
Christians appeal to the resurrection of Christ. But Paul, 
the original preacher of the resurrection, writes : " If there 
be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen." 
None but believers in immortality will believe that Christ 
rose. The belief evidences the evidence ; the fact follows 
the faith it could not create. 

Now, it is not to be denied that in these modern times 
the belief has been wearing away. Men are not ruled by 
feeling, as they were. Ours is an age of research and re- 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 215 

flection with the few ; of absorbing practical activity with 
the many. Science, a new prophet, lifts up a loud and 
importunate voice. Chemistry has raised a host of doubts 
in regard to the existence of an intelligence or soul separate 
from organization ; and there are philosophers who boldly 
assert that mind is the product of organization. Historical 
study has shown the groundlessness of the ecclesiastical 
traditions of the resurrection. Criticism takes away the 
risen form of Jesus. Temporal activities and worldly in- 
terests undermine the foundations and impair the substance 
of ideal hopes. The devotion to earthly affairs disinclines — 
yes, disables — the mind, so that it cannot feel at home 
amid unsubstantial things. The release from the rule of 
priest and church brings emancipation from the old author- 
ities which upheld the dogma, and the liberated, rebellious 
people find that they have thrown away the supports they 
had rested on, and have no independent supports of their 
own. They have never believed the doctrine for them- 
selves, but have taken it on trust from their religious 
teachers. They have ceased to take things on trust from 
their teachers ; consequently they have no assurance, and 
their faith leaves them. They never did truly believe the 
truth on its merits ; now they cannot even say they be- 
lieve. They never had a personal conviction ; now they 
cannot pretend to have one. 

There is a profound skepticism on this subject in our 
modern society. Of scientific men, some openly avow 
unbelief in the future life ; some decline to say anything 
about it, as not coming within their province ; and some 
accept without question the dogma of the Church which 
claims a revelation from God, and the miraculous energy 
of the Holy Ghost to quicken its own dead. Worldly 
men, whether of business or pleasure, are thinking of other 
things, and give the matter little attention. Their faculty 



216 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

of apprehension acts feebly on these sublimated themes, 
and the great anticipation fades away from their minds. 
A few hardy philosophers deny immortality to the common 
herd, w r ho can neither deserve it nor use it, and claim it 
for the morally great and good, who, having appreciated 
this life, may advance a respectable title to another. 

Thus the popular faith goes on crumbling in pieces. 
Old arguments are overthrown, or fall by their own 
weight. The many believe by force of having believed ; 
the few, who are noble and spiritual, believe on grounds 
purely moral, listening to the prophecy of their higher, 
rational nature. Some of the more intellectual put the 
matter aside as of no pressing concern, and say that they 
are prepared for either result — immortality or annihilation. 
They are willing to trust the Power that made them. 
Sure that what is best for them will befall, they await, 
unanxious, the solution of the mystery. Says Emerson : 
" Of immortality the soul, when well employed, is incu- 
rious. It is so well that it is sure it will be well. It 
asks no question of the Supreme Power. Immortality will 
come to such as are fit for it ; and he wdio would be a 
great soul in the future, must be a great- soul now." 

The advent of Spiritualism saved the popular belief in 
immortality from the danger, if not of total, yet of par- 
tial eclipse. To the multitude of mankind Spiritualism 
brought a new revelation ; and the eagerness with w T hich it 
was welcomed, showed the need of it that was felt. Hun- 
dreds of thousands — nay, millions, in America and in 
Europe, in sober England and mercurial France — hailed 
the promise of communication with rapture. People of 
every degree and class — the instructed and the uninsfcruct- 
ed, toilers and thinkers, mechanics and mathematicians, 
merchants and men of letters, tradesfolk and philosophers, 
physicians, lawyers, professors, judges, divines — investi- 



THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 21? 

gated and embraced it. It met the crying demand for 
palpable evidence, for substantial and incontrovertible 
facts. It challenged the experimental method of modern 
science : it courted skepticism ; it offered proof for tradi- 
tion, law for miracle, the confirmation of the senses for 
the dogma of faith. It came to the doubting disciple and 
said : " Reach hither thy fingers, and behold my hand ; 
reach forth thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be 
not faithless but believing." The Baron de Guldenstubbe, 
of Paris, attests that more than fifty persons — among 
whom were barons, princes, counts, colonels, physicians, 
men of culture, and artists of renown — witnessed again 
and again the astounding phenomenon of direct commu- 
nication by writing from invisible beings. 

That a belief thus attested and published should have 
spread like a new gospel of the kingdom, is not wonderful. 
It would have been wonderful had it not. It was what 
the world was waiting for. It came as answer to a pas- 
sionate prayer ; it was the bringing of life and immor- 
tality to light that desponding mankind groaned for. The 
shadowy realm came into view ; the gloomy barriers of 
the sepulchre disappeared ; the dividing flood was dried 
up ; voices were heard from the Silent Land ; the bleak 
waste of the Beyond was lively with happy forms ; dirges 
changed into songs ; the raiment of mourning fell off. 
The heart reached out its eager hands once more, and was 
thankful to embrace something more substantial than a 
shade. The " family in heaven and earth " was reunited. 

That to multitudes Spiritualism has been an unspeak- 
able solace, an unmixed boon and blessing, it is impossi- 
ble for me to doubt. I have seen the sweet, humanizing 
effects of it too many times not to be N persuaded of them. 
I have seen it reviving hearts and refreshing homes. How 
far its benefits have been qualified by the beliefs that have 

10 • 



218 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 

been associated with it, I do not feel called on to deter- 
mine. Mr. A. J. Davis, a high authority, declares in 
effect that Spiritualism has abandoned its true mission. 
Instead of persuading the unbelieving world of the exis- 
tence of departed spirits, it turns to the spirits and calls 
on them for oracles and information. It sets up the trance 
speaker in place of the rational teacher ; substitutes the 
seance for the church ; drops the old revelation through 
prophets and apostles, only to promulgate a new one 
through mediums ; discards the literature of Christendom 
for the " inspirations " of illiterate men and women ; and 
in exchange for the ancient religions of mankind, erects 
a new religion on ghostly foundations. The mission of 
Spiritualism, according to Mr. Davis, is to convince people 
of their immortality. With that its duty began, and 
when that is done its duty will end. If it would accom- 
plish the purpose for which it was sent into the world, it 
must retrace its mistaken steps. If it fails to do so, it 
will not only forsake its calling, bat will fasten on the 
world another superstition in place of the superstitions it 
is outgrowing, and will alienate from it both men and 
angels. 

To the weighty criticism of Mr. Davis, I, who am but 
a thoughtful looker-on, shall presume to add nothing. My 
purpose has been to show some of the many doorways into 
the immortal life. The mortal certainty does put on im- 
mortality. In many forms we surely live again, live 
eternally and for ever. We cannot die if we would. 
Death has no dominion over us. We may live in the 
future as we will, cherishing the hope that most inspires. 
If we crave personal immortality, the greatest minds and 
the best hearts of the race countenance our belief in it. 
If we are unable to entertain that expectation, there re- 
mains the other — an immortality of wholesome influence 



TEE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 219 

in the race. If that seems cold, vague and bewildering, 
the knowledge that we may live in the hearts and souls of 
those who love us, offers a kindling anticipation and a 
tender promise. From one of these convictions — why 
not from all ?— we can obtain the strength and the conso- 
lation we need; can be lifted out of despondency, and 
saved from the folly of sordid or shameful life. The 
faith that most dignifies and consoles is the best. That is 
the noblest conception of immortality that most gloriously 
animates and irradiates our dust. 



XIII. 

THE YIGTOEY OYEE DEATH. 

< 

" The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death/' — 1 CoB. xv. 26 

TO the large majority of mankind, whether reflecting 
or unreflecting, this description of death as the great 
enemy will seem to be literally true. It is the enemy of 
whatever in existence is friendliest — of pleasure, of hap- 
piness, joy, satisfaction, mirth, affection, success, pros- 
perity, greatness. An old covered bridge at Lucerne, in 
Switzerland, is decorated with a series of twenty-four 
pictures, entitled^ u The Dance of Death," representing 
the " king of terrors" as surprising people in their bliss- 
ful moments. The lover, the lord, the line lady, the 
courtier, the prince, the merchant, the reveler, the soldier, 
each at the most critical moment, is arrested and hurried 
away from the place of honor or the scene of delight. It 
was a favorite theme in the Middle Ages. Painter, poet 
and satirist celebrated this " dance of death " with the 
grirn humor that was characteristic of the superstitious 
time. Religion kept such scenes faithfully before the 
people's mind, and the people welcomed them with the 
ghastly satisfaction which images of horror ever excite. 

The dread of death is universal and instinctive ; and 
yet how many rush into its arms ! Suicide is a most im- 
pressive fact in this connection. The disappointed lover, 
the discouraged adventurer, the suspected clerk, the child 
wounded in its self-love or fearful of punishment, faces 



THE VICTOR Y VER BE A TH. 221 

the great enemy and invites his blow. Every now and 
then the community is shocked by suicides so unprovoked 
and so frequent, as almost to persuade us that the natural 
fear of death is passing away. 

The inconsistency is easily explained. Lord Bacon says 
there is no passion that will not overmaster the terror of 
death. For passion is thoughtless ; occupied wholly with 
an immediate suffering, it makes no estimate of any other 
kind of pain ; absorbed in an instantaneous sorrow, it takes 
no other sorrow into account. The mind entertains but 
one passion at a time, whether it be joy or fear. But men 
are not always or generally under the influence of passion. 
Ordinary life is calm, calculating, considerate, and it is to 
ordinary life that death is terrible. 

It is the thought of death that is terrible, not death. 
Death is gentle, peaceful, painless ; instead of bringing 
suffering, it brings an end of suffering. It is misery's 
cure. Where death is, agony is not. The processes of 
death are all friendly. The near aspect of death is gra- 
cious. 

There is a picture somewhere of a frightful face, livid 
and ghastly, which the beholder gazes on with horror, and 
would turn away from, but for a hideous fascination that 
not only rivets his attention, but draws him closer to it. 
On approaching the picture the hideousness disappears, 
and when directly confronted it is not any more seen ; the 
face is the face of an angel. It is a picture of death, and 
the object of the artist was to impress the idea that the 
terror of death is in apprehension. Theodore Parker, 
whose observation of death was very large, has said that 
he never saw a person of any belief, condition, or experi- 
ence unwilling to die when the time came ; and my own 
more limited observation confirms the truth of the re- 
mark. Death is an ordinance of nature, and like every 



222 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

ordinance of nature is directed by beneficent laws to bene- 
ficent ends. "What must be, is made welcome. Necessity 
is beautiful. 

But no sweetness of death sweetens the apprehension 
of death. That, save to the philosophic or enfeebled mind, 
is seldom otherwise than fearful. Few can contemplate 
calmly their own dissolution ; few look quietly forward 
to the termination of their friend's existence. To thou- 
sands, life is simply an effort to escape from death, to 
avert or defer the evil hour. Disease loses half its terrors 
for us when we feel sure it will not prove fatal. Years of 
sickness, of weakness, of agony, are welcomed in prefer- 
ence to death. Old people who have nothing left either 
to do or to enjoy, shrink from the thought of dissolution. 
The sentiment which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of 
Claudio, in " Measure for Measure," expresses the com- 
mon feeling of the average of mankind : 

" The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
To what we fear of death." 

The terror is older than the records of mankind, and it 
has a solemn character that associates it with doom. There 
is a mystery about death. It seizes on the imagination. 
Its silence, its secrecy, its unavoidableness, its impartiality, 
its pitilessness, the absence in it of anything like moral 
emotion, its refusal to be questioned, the grim irony of its 
whole procedure, invest it with an awe that is oppressive. 
There seems to be something behind it ; some vast power, 
conscious yet insensible, endowed with will, but wilful ; a 
gloomy power that nothing can break. All mysteries are 
summed up in that of death. 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 223 

' ' From the globe of black day to the summit of Venus, 
I traversed all the difficulties of the world ; 

Every tie which was fastened around me by deceit and illusion 
Was loosened, except that of death." 

This impression of death must have been made late in 
the experience of the human mind. Ages must have 
elapsed before it was indelibly stamped there, for it im- 
plies the growth of reflection. If we can imagine the 
time when the human race was hardly distinguishable 
from the brute creation, we shall perceive that no terror 
of death could have existed. Man probably had at this 
epoch no more thought of death than the beast had. Not 
till he had separated himself by development from the 
animal creation, and in some respects ranged himself un- 
der different laws, could death have seemed a singular or 
startling event ; and even then the state of violence, war- 
fare and perpetual confusion that prevailed everywhere, 
must have made all reflection on death impossible. 

The usual accompaniments of death concealed its char- 
acter. Individual men died by the bite of the serpent, 
the claws of the lion, the hug of the bear, the spring of 
the panther, the tread of the huge beast, the fall of rocks, 
the overflow of the flood, the enemy's club or spear. Hun- 
ger, thirst, cold, carried them off ; war and famine swept 
them away by hundreds ; but there was always a visible 
cause, palpable, usually violent, commonly sudden, and 
the effect was connected strictly with the cause. Death 
was associated with a shock of some kind. There were 
innumerable isolated facts of death, but there was no law 
or inevitable sequence of death. Death without a weapon 
that accounted for it was probably unthought of. Of 
course there were deaths without violence. Women and 
children died^ but at that period, and for ages on ages 
after, women and children were of no account. Old men 



224: THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

died ; but not many men lived to be old, and the few who 
did were not worth considering. Their death was proba- 
bly hastened by the violent act of their own people, who 
felt that they were a useless incumbrance. Strong men 
alone were considered necessary to the stability of the 
tribe. Their lives alone were significant ; their fate alone 
was interesting. 

Not until hunting and war had to some extent ceased 
to be the universal pursuits, and something resembling a 
condition of peace had begun — not until existence had 
fallen into fixed conditions of regular habits, could any- 
thing like a sober appreciation of the phenomenon of 
death have become possible. Then, at a period in the ca- 
reer of man comparatively recent, centuries an centuries 
after the epoch just described, the fact may have broken 
on the human mind that death was an event of universal 
and inevitable occurrence ; that it came to all alike — came 
at all times, under all circumstances, to men, women and 
children — came without noise, without weapon or blood- 
shed — came when no enemy was near, when the wild beast 
was driven far off, when the elements were quiet, when 
the flood kept its natural channel. Then, for the first 
time, the conviction began to gain strength that there was 
a power or death. Not yet, however, were these unin- 
structed people able to conceive of what we call the law 
or ordinance of death ; not yet were they able to think of 
death without a death bringer, an enemy who killed with 
malicious intent. There was no more a visible foe, no 
more a distinct foe in each particular instance ; the slayer 
was invisible ; moreover, there was but one universal 
slayer, one enemy for all mankind, one subtle, diabolical 
adversary, who dwelt in the mysterious chambers of the 
air, and, invulnerable, unassailable, shot his vengeful ar- 
rows into human hearts. Who was this awful avenger ? 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 225 

Who was this remorseless slayer? Why did he slay? 
Why did he hate ? What had the race done to him that 
he should massacre them one by one, never sparing an in- 
dividual for any cause whatsoever ? Could he not be dis- 
armed, placated, bought off by gifts ? Was no rescue, no 
respite possible ? 

Then we may suppose began the earliest efforts at 
emancipation from the dreadful curse. The priest arose, 
charged with the duty of making intercession with the 
awful destroyer. Altars were built, fires were kindled, 
sacrificial knives took the blood of innocent beasts, a per- 
petual smoke carried aloft to the dwelling place of the 
frightful king the gloomy prayers of the crouching multi- 
tudes; sorcerers practiced charms, soothsayers muttered 
incantations, jugglers practiced magical arts ; the whole 
apparatus of superstition was called into play to rid the 
race of its curse, and procure remission from the destroyer. 
Religion scarcely had a purpose distinct from that of 
evading the necessity of death. 

By the side of the priest stood the physician, with his 
herbs and philters, his potations and talismans, trying to 
heal the wounds the priest tried to prevent. The priest 
and physician were brothers, as they always should be. 
Their officers were alike ; their purpose was always the 
same ; they waged the same warfare, in the same interest, 
if not with the same weapons or on the same field. Their 
common enemy was death, the enemy of the race. Each 
to some extent shared the duties of the other. Both were 
sacred persons, holy and honored, set apart, maintained at 
public cost, endowed with special privileges. The priest 
was a physician, the physician was a priest. The priest 
had the gift of healing by his touch ; the physician had 
the gift of expelling evil spirits. Neither could do his 
full work without aid from the other. Approaching the 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

same problem from different sides, they frequently met 
for exchange of counsel and co-operation of endeavor. At 
first the priest overtopped the physician, as the office of 
placating the slayer was more essential than the office of 
warding off the deadly arrows which still, sooner or later, 
reached their mark. Gradually the physician acquired 
equal eminence with the priest, for the priest's interces- 
sion was obviously futile. The slayer did not relent ; no 
answer came to the supplication ; the darts fell as thickly 
as ever and were as fatal. Death was unavoidable ; but 
it might be postponed, it might be alleviated, its agony 
might be mitigated. Men bless the good physician, and 
well they may. His is still a sacred calling ; his is the 
order of the Holy Ghost. He belongs to an ancient and 
noble fraternity, a brotherhood which, in all times and 
places, has been in league against death. Grouped in 
many schools, practicing many methods, pursuing many 
lines of study, distinguished by many titles, wearing many 
badges, equipped with a great variety of arms, they all 
march under a single banner, the banner on which is inscrib- 
ed the name of the Prince of Life. Every honest physician 
is a soldier trained for this great war. His weapons are 
the plants, the herbs, the minerals ; air, light, water, 
electricity, every remedial force in nature; the vital 
powers of the frame, the laws of healthful living. With 
his cunning instruments he repairs injury, cuts away the 
diseased parts of the body, mends bruises, heals wounds. 
Faithfully he keeps his post, standing between the living 
and the doom that threatens life. It is his mission to in- 
troduce life safely into the world, to protect it, to come to 
its rescue when assailed, to mitigate its pains, to ease its 
conditions, to nurture its powers, to prolong its term. He 
snatches the little children from the clutches of the dark 
angel, and gives them back to their mothers ; he restores 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 227 

parents to their distressed children ; lie gives sleep to the 
restless ; he keeps the family circle together ; he is the 
preserver of beauty, and strength, and virtue. But for 
him the power of death would indeed be felt to be a 
curse ; death would be the great enemy. But the physi- 
cian gains no victory over death. He baffles it, checks it, 
arrests it, puts it off, disarms it of its agony, compels it to 
wait more convenient seasons, makes it respect conditions ; 
but he gains no victory over it. Death, in spite of him, 
comes to all at last. None escape ; none ever will escape. 
The physician cannot save himself or those dearer to him 
than himself. It is touching to see how powerless he is to 
strike the destroyer down. When the fatal hour comes, 
he that has rescued hundreds cannot rescue his wife, his 
child ; he who has prevented hundreds from, falling into 
the grave, stands by helplessly and sees his only darling 
slip over the edge and disappear. All the medical science 
of the century avails nothing to save the best man of the 
century when his hour arrives ; nor can we imagine the 
time as ever coming when it will. 

It is this law, this power, decree, doom of death, that 
so impresses the imagination of the world. Paul felt 
this ; it was never absent from his mind ; it seems to have 
been the one frightful fact to him in all the universe ; it 
tinged all his thought ; it is the key to the secret chambers 
of his speculation. The simple historical fact, that " death 
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had 
not sinned as Adam did," was a fact of tremendous sig- 
nificance in his view. He speaks of the " law of death," 
of " the ministration of death," of " death as passing on 
all men." The unavoidableness, the irresistibleness of 
the experience overwhelmed him. Death to him was not 
a fact merely ; it was a fact with a terrible power behind 
it ; it was a doom, a curse, a penalty. Paul always asso- 



228 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

ciates death with sin. Sin is the cause of death. But 
for sin there would have been no death ; for " Sin came 
into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon 
all men, because all had sinned." " The sting of death is 
sin." The law of death and the law of sin are the same. 
Sin was the mysterious destroyer. Break his dominion, 
and death is abolished. 

Here comes in the Redeemer's office. He came to 
break the power of sin, and thus strike a blow at the 
heart of death. The Christ of Paul was above everything 
else the sinless man. This was his peculiarity. In this 
lay his redeeming power. What he may have been as 
teacher, revealer of truth, reformer, exemplar of right- 
eousness, was of quite secondary import. It was as the 
sinless man that he saved — saved from death, which was 
the great salvation. " The first man was of the earth 
earthy ; the second man was the Lord from Heaven." 
" The first Adam was a living soul, a vital principle ; the 
last Adam was a quickening spirit." " As in Adam all 
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." " As by 
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and 
so death passed on all men, because all have sinned ; so 
the grace of God, and the gracious gift through one man, 
hath abounded unto many." " The law of life in Christ 
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." 
The resurrection of Christ was thus a logical necessity. 
We may almost say it was a foregone conclusion. In 
advance of proof, perhaps in advance of trustworthy evi- 
dence, it might have been assumed on the strength of the 
conviction that the Christ was sinless. At all events, the 
least hint, the faintest rumor, the slightest tradition of a 
resurrection, would have been sufficient for the apostle's 
ardent logic. If others believed it on any ground what- 
ever, Paul was ready to accept an opinion that jumped so 
exactly with his hope. 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 229 

The sinless man could not die. Christ was sinless, 
therefore the grave did not hold him. The preaching of 
the resurrection was, therefore, the great business ; that 
was the heart of the gospel; everything else proceeded 
from that. The sinless Christ institutes an order of sin- 
less men ; the risen Christ establishes a line of risen men. 
" ]STow is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first- 
fruits of them that slept." " Every man in his own order, 
Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at 
his coming." " The sting of death is sin, but thanks be 
to God who has given us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." " If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His 
Spirit that dwelleth wdthin you." 

This language is to be read literally. Paul meant ex- 
actly what he said, nothing more and nothing less. He 
meant that believers in Christ were not to die any more ; 
that physical death was for them abolished. If any had 
already died, they would rise in bodies of light on the 
morning when the Lord should descend from heaven with 
a shout and the trumpet's sound ; the others would not 
die at all. " Behold, I show you a mystery ; we shall not 
all sleep the sleep of death, but we shall all be changed, in a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye. The trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we 
shall be changed. These corruptible bodies shall put on 
incorruption, these mortal forms shall put on immortali- 
ty ; " and when all this occurs, " death will be swallowed 
up in victory." In anticipation of this wonderful trans- 
formation, this dropping off of the material covering and 
unfolding of immaterial forms, the apostle breaks out into 
rapturous peans of joy ; he cannot contain his transport. 
" O death," he cries, " where is thy sting ! O grave, 



230 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

where is thy victory ! " Henceforth none need die ; all 
may be transfigured. The earth need never again be 
opened to receive a lifeless body ; the carnal part was to 
pass away like an exhalation, and be no more seen. For 
a little while the rapture lasted ; for a very few years the 
small company of men and women who cherished the 
apostle's faith, lived as if death had literally " no dominion 
over them." Death to them was not 

" So much even as the lifting of a latch ; 
Only a step into the open air, 
Out of a tent already luminous, 
With light that shone through its transparent walls." 

The dream did not last long. The laws of nature soon 
dispelled the illusion. One by one the company of be- 
lievers fell asleep ; the apostles themselves died and were 
buried like the rest ; no trumpet sounded, no Lord ap- 
peared, no grave gave up its tenant, no forms of light 
gleamed in the air. Faith in Christ had no virtue to alter 
the physiological conditions of being, to adjust the rela- 
tions between the human body and its environment, to 
prevent the occurrence of accident, to arrest the action of 
hereditary disease, to avert the consequences of impru- 
dence, ignorance, folly, to render harmless the sudden 
blow, the pestilence, the fever, weakening of the blood, 
paralysis of the nerves. The constitution of things re- 
mained as it had been from the beginning, and gave no 
sign of interruption. Death was as inexorable, as impar- 
tial, as remorseless as ever ; it spared the believer as little 
as the unbeliever ; it respected the saint no more than the 
sinner. 

Victory over death, then, was not to be hoped for. 
The only victory that might perhaps be achieved, was 
victory over the fear of death. To dethrone the king 
being impossible, the only feasible attempt was to deprive 



THE VICTORY OYER DEATH. 231 

him of his terrors. This the church undertook. There 
was the sepulchre ; but a doorway could be opened out of 
it. The dark river still rushed on ; but lights could be 
set on the further shore. The believer must see corrup- 
tion, but need not remain in it. Faith in Christ could not 
save from death, that was certain ; but it could save from 
the bitterness of death. The death-bed of the believer 
was declared to be soft and downy, his last hours peaceful, 
his departure a sweet release, his unconsciousness a pleas- 
ant sleep, his final thoughts and experiences happy. Angel 
faces were imagined in his chamber ; glimpses of the risen 
Lord, such as were granted to the early saints, were 
promised. Of the " agony, the shroud, the pall, the 
breathless darkness and the narrow house," nothing was 
said. The teaching was all of the spiritual form that 
could not perish — of the risen Saviour, of the waiting- 
angels, of the " green fields beyond the swelling flood," 
and sunny mansions, and deathless songs, and fadeless 
flowers, of crowns and snow-white garments. Nothing 
was omitted that might help to make complete the victory 
over the ancient terror. The church, through all its 
voices, gave lessons of cheer : flutes and dulcimers were 
sweet substitutes for the clangor of the last trump. 

"With a hope like this, Christendom ought to stand on 
jubilant feet and welcome death with smiles. It should 
count the fear of death a shame and a sin ; it should pro- 
nounce the natural terror of dissolution an infidelity. Not 
once in a year should its Easter day be celebrated ; every 
day of death should be a glorious Easter; every grave 
should be a gateway; every funeral mound a mount 
of ascension ; a festive hour should be the hour of trans- 
figuration, and it should be greeted with murmurs of 
thanksgiving and hymns of praise, by people with radiant 
faces and shining robes. The hour of death should be 



232 THE VfCTORY OVER DEATH. 

greeted more joyously than the hour of birth, as the hour 
that ushers the immortal being into a cloudless, tearless 
world. And so it would be but for one drawback, one 
fatal qualification, less serious to the devout unquestioning 
member of the Roman church than to the thoughtful be- 
lievers of Protestant communions, whose faith is a private 
conviction resting on personal experience. The Romanist 
reposes in the assurance of the church; the Protestant 
must have the assurance of his heart ; for him, therefore, 
the qualification I speak of is of the gravest conse- 
quence. 

The victory was promised to believers only / to all others 
death remained terrible as before, nay, a thousand times 
more terrible. To the unbeliever it was represented as 
the awful power that dragged him before his judge for 
sentence. " Afterwards they that are Christ's," said 
Paul. His hope was for none besides. "When thou 
hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open 
the gates of heaven to all believers" said the ancient Te 
Denm. Death to the unbeliever was painted in the most 
hideous colors. To him the last hours were hours of phy- 
sical and mental agony ; doubt and dread took hold on 
him ; his bed was a bed of coals ; no visions of beauty 
dawned on his sight, but ghastly shapes haunted his fancy ; 
his chamber was infested with evil spirits, demons glared 
at him in the night, imps of hell grinned and gibbered by 
his pillow ; he tasted in advance the bitterness of perdi- 
tion. It was taken for granted that the death of the un- 
believer was horrible; no evidence to the contrary was 
admitted. Priests took the liberty of declaring, against 
all proof, that infidels like Yoltaire, Rousseau, Paine, 
suffered in dying the torments of the damned. They 
knew it ; they could not have died in peace ; all appear- 
ances to the contrary must be regarded as deceptive. 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 233 

Whatever the by-standers may have seen and heard was 
delusion. The unbelieving heart in its inmost recesses 
must have known its own condition, must have felt the 
tooth of the devouring worm. 

But who can be sure that he is one of the true believ- 
ers ? There is the terrible question that constantly recurs 
to reflecting minds, and that makes the apprehension of 
death more bitter within Christendom than it ever was 
without. To the natural dread of dissolution is added 
the unspeakable dread of that which may come after dis- 
solution — the fear of perdition for one's friends, if not 
for one's-self. The thought of death has been made ap- 
palling beyond description by this dreadful uncertainty — 
an uncertainty which weighed most cruelly upon the most 
conscientious, and most frightfully tormented those who 
had the best right to peace. Horrible misgivings gather- 
ed about the bed-side of the so-called believer. The 
priest sat by close, trying to extract comforting admissions 
from the weak, distracted mind — questioning, cross-ques- 
tioning, taking down words, noting expressions, watching 
the changing lights in the eye, hanging on the faintest 
breath, doing all in his power to insure a triumphant 
passage through the dark valley. The most miserable 
death-beds have been the death-beds of the saints, whose 
hearts were tenderest. The callous suffered nothing. 
The believers had misgivings; the unbelievers went their 
way untroubled. Few men ever feared the thought of 
death as the believing, devoted, excellent Cowper did, 
and his experience was by no means a peculiar one. 
Certainly no " infidel " we know of has suffered so. 
The " qualification " preyed on Cowper's heart. This 
is the reason why the victory was not won. It was im- 
possible to tell who deserved it, and the fear that one 
might not deserve it added to the ancient enemy a sting, 



234: THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

the poison whereof was deadly and could not be ex- 
tracted. 

Happily, this cause of defeat is now in great measure 
removed. The " liberal believers" have modified and in 
some respects completely changed the conditions of suc- 
cessful battle with this formidable foe. The technical 
belief in Christ is not by them demanded. Immortality 
is declared to be the common inheritance of mankind, 
the general privilege of human nature. By virtue of his 
intelligence, his affection, his moral will, the power of his 
personality, man is pronounced invulnerable to death. It is 
contended that being continues precisely as it was before ; 
that individuality persists, that consciousness is uninter- 
rupted, that love easily overleaps the dividing space between 
one sphere of existence and another ; that, in fact, no divid- 
ing space exists; that death is but a change of form, 
affecting outward conditions merely — a change which, so 
far from being a shock, a convulsion, is a process in the 
orderly growth of the spiritual being. The terrors of the 
world beyond are also abolished, the abyss of hell is 
covered up, the vengeful demons have disappeared, the 
flames are quenched, the instruments of torture are laid 
by, the burning sandy wastes are reclaimed and converted 
into delicious gardens. Where the devils lurked, the 
angels wander ; where the damned writhed in agony, the 
children play ; the heavenly Jerusalem covers the whole 
plain of the hereafter. 

To all who believe thus — and the number of them is 
increasing day by day — death is virtually abolished. The 
grave is filled up and planted with flowers ; the hour of 
departure is the hour of release, the hour of new birth, 
hour of freedom, of expansion, of joy, hour of answer to 
life's question, of reward for life's labor, of fruition to 
life's hope, of achievement to life's endeavor, of deliver- 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 235 

ance from life's burden and sorrow. To these the old 
conflict is over, never to be renewed. 

" This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 
The twilight of our day, the vestibule. 
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death, 
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar, 
And make us embryos of existence free." 

All this time physiology has been busy undermining the 
foundations of the old fear. With its line instrument, sci- 
ence, with its unerring method, it has made its careful ap- 
proaches and drawn its firm parallels, till at length the cit- 
adel has been forced to surrender. Reason tells us that 
death is an ordinance of nature, an institution of the or- 
ganic world, a provision of Providence ; inevitable because 
beneficent ; inevitable as the development of life on the 
planet is inevitable ; admirable as the order of the world 
is admirable. It has its place along with those indispen- 
sable agencies of progress which cannot be altered without 
unsettling the fundamental plan of creation ; it has its 
mission by the side of the benignant powers that bring 
creation to its perfection. 

When the force that lies concealed in the germ-cell of 
the human organization is spent, death removes the frame, 
now serviceable no longer, to the vast laboratory where na- 
ture converts the worn-out material of the universe into 
forms of new use and beauty. The cast-off garments reap- 
pear in the beauteous vesture of tree and grass, and flower, 
and yellow harvest ; not an atom of refuse but has its love- 
ly resurrection. When the last scene of existence is ready 
to close and the play is over, death gives the signal and lets 
the curtain fall. Bat for him the tiresome acts would drag 
on, scene after scene, when the meaning was exhausted ; 
but for him feebleness would continue its useless being, 
drooping, complaining, whining, wearing out strength and 



236 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

cheerfulness — a burden to itself, an incumbrance to others, 
a dead weight on all. He dismisses the tired actors and 
actresses to their rest. Tithonus, beloved of Eos, the 
dawn, obtained from the gods the bopn of immortality on 
earth ; but the foolish boy forgot to ask for the accompa- 
nying gift of perpetual youth. His organization wasted 
and wore out while his years ran on. His immortality was 
an endless misery. He was, by his own prayer, con- 
demned to the horror of being unable to die. 

When space is needed for the new generations that come 
crowding on, death gently clears the way for them. One 
generation goes that another may come. The bright, 
strong children appear, line on line, rank on rank, and en- 
ter on their heritage. They bring new eyes for the land- 
scape, new ears for the music, new hands for the work. 
They break upon the scene with shouts of joy ; they swarm 
over the welcoming earth ; they try their bright minds on 
the old questions ; they press their brave hearts against 
the old experiences. The departure of the old makes 
their advent possible, gives them room and opportunity. 
We smile on death when we greet these with smiles ; we 
drop tears of tenderness on the grave when w T e drop tears 
of gratitude on the cradle in which these are rocked. The 
earth is not big enough for all at once. 

"All things that we love and cherish, 
Like ourselves, must fade and perish; 
Such is our rude mortal lot, 
Love itself would, did they not." 

It is death that flings open the hospitable doors and bids 
the crowd of new-comers to the feast of life. That so 
manv lauorh and sine; ; that so manv eat the ambrosia of 
life, and sip its nectar ; that, after thousands and tens of 
thousands of years, the beauty of the world is still new, 
the order of the world still enchanting, the routine of the 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 237 

world still interesting, the joy of the world still intoxicat- 
ing, the problem of the world still inviting, the work of 
the world still engaging; that the experiences of life, 
though millions of times repeated, do not lose their zest — 
all this we owe to the benignant ministry of death. 

But for death, no gain, no improvement, no endeavor, 
no progress, no fresh intelligence, no renewed will. For 
the new search there must be new curiosity ; for the new 
curiosity, new impulse ; for the new impulse, new organ- 
ization. Humanity rolls on in successive waves, one 
swiftly following another, each pushing further than the 
last. No single generation secretes the force that is avail- 
able for all time ; it is given in portions to every age in 
turn. Death marks the pulsations of the heart-beats. 

The law of death is thus a law of progress. The beauty 
of the world demands death for its appreciation; the re- 
sources of the world demand death for their development ; 
the beneficence of the world demands death, that it may 
be shared ; the glory of the world demands death, that the 
myriads of mankind may behold it with freshly wonder- 
ing eye ; the intellectual and moral grandeurs of the world 
demand death, that they may be perfectly understood ; 
earth and heaven alike demand death. It is the child of 
the perfect wisdom and the primeval love. 

To mortals, death still has its agonies and terrors ; but 
the time will come when the advent of death will be as 
sweet as its intention. The time is coming when the con- 
ditions of life will be better comprehended, and the laws 
of life be more implicitly obeyed ; when children will be 
more healthfully born and more wisely nurtured, when 
physical excesses will be diminished, when the secrets of 
organization will be discovered, and remedies be mul- 
tiplied for human ills, and rules of prevention be adopted, 
and liabilities of accident be reduced in number by care- 



238 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 



fulness, and peace be made between the organization and 
its environment, and hereditary taints be worked out of 
the blood. Then the last enemy will indeed be destroyed ; 
death will be a sleep ; man will 

" So live that when the summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
He'll go, not like the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged, to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach his grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



6* 



>^ 



